Finding A Trusted Property Expert

With the cloud of uncertainty hovering over the property market, it’s vital that you find a trusted property expert if you’re thinking of moving home within the next year. You need to make sure you have someone you can turn to, someone to trust to know what they’re talking about, someone who can steer you through the property minefield and away from any property related nightmares.

You need someone who is prepared to put their head above the parapet and has the strength to make a prediction based on what they know as property experts – after all they’re the ones who are sifting through property reports and information on a daily basis, with their ear to the ground, analysing matters.

So, when you ask questions like “where are property prices going from here”, you’d want as clear an answer as possible and not hear that they’re as lost as you are.

Realistically, anyone can “predict” where property prices will go, but it’s what those predictions are based on that makes predictions wildly wrong, nearly right or bang on the money.

Let’s look at a few examples from this tumultuous year:

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors

From as far back as April this year, they’ve called the market and what it was going to do spectacularly wrong. A few of their findings were as follows:

April – 72% of their members were deeply negative about near term expectations with 35% saying prices would fall 4% and 40% believing prices would fall more than 4% when the market reopened.

May – members polled were still downbeat on the near and longer term.

June – ‘challenging economic conditions will dampen market for some time to come’

July – Their members were ‘flat to marginally positive’

August – reports that house price growth at a 4-year high

September – reports that house prices are accelerating with London prices increasing now too

Meanwhile the House Price indices of national lenders Halifax and Nationwide have shown the following:

	Halifax	Nationwide
April	+ 2.7%	+ 3.7%
May	+ 2.6%	+ 1.8%
June	+ 2.5%	- 0.1%
July	+ 3.8%	+ 1.5%
August	+5.2%	+ 3.7%
September	+7.3%	+ 5.0%

Savills

Savills are a well-respected company which prepares reports every month and makes 5-year predictions on where they see the property market going based on key economic data. They appear to have experienced the same issues as RICS, but at least they’re prepared to put their head on the block with their 5-year predictions.

November 2019 – They predicted 15% growth over 5 years to 2024.

May – Changed their predictions to house prices falling 5-10% in the short term.

June – Predicted house prices to fall by 7.5% in 2020.

September – Reported that ‘the pace of change has taken us all by surprise’ and demand is outstripping supply leading to house price growth. They revised their house price growth for 2020 back to +4% and an increase of 20.4% in the next 5 years.

In their defence, you may say no one knew what was going to happen with COVID-19 having turned the world on its head and the stamp duty holidays announced by Rishi Sunak which kickstarted the market.

However, as Founder and CEO of The Property Angel, I’ve been posting on my personal LinkedIn account (connect with me and check it out) – since the beginning of May that property prices wouldnt fall and would be protected because demand would outstrip supply. Note that this was well before the Chancellor’s stamp duty announcement on July 8^th.

Given my dedication to improving my clients’ experience, I kept my ear to the ground, following weekly publicly available trackers to monitor movements in how the market got on.

I also wrote blogs published at the end of August on how I think property prices would go over the next year. The fact that my predictions have been consistent and accurate separates The Property Angel from the rest.

Now at The Property Angel, I’ve had a track record of spot-on predictions. As a number of you may know, I used to operate in the one-time booming city of Aberdeen, a city based wholly on oil and seemingly nothing else. Local property experts there were reported in the local press in February 2018 as calling the bottom of the market prompting me to produce a White Paper at https://bit.ly/3jTCRx1on Aberdeen’s property market and where I predicted a further drop in prices over the next 18 months of between 7-10%. This was later shown to be accurate on the local property portal ASPC https://bit.ly/2GRyzbb where prices did indeed drop 6.1% and then a further 3% and are in line to rise by the end of 2020 by the percentage we predicted of 1-2%. No one else called the market correctly!

A lot of research goes into these posts, predictions and white papers – at The Property Angel we know potential buyers and sellers want someone to deliver good or bad news with authority, place their head above the parapet and try and make sense of what’s going on.

We aim to do just that -breaking down what’s likely to happen based on our long experience in the industry, our analysis of what’s going on and cutting through the hysteria of media coverage to really help guide and support home movers through these difficult times.

In the meantime, for free guidance on what you should do if you’re thinking of buying or selling start your journey with us here by completing your Perfect Next Home Profile  Here or Book Your Free 30 min Zoom Call Here.

I look forward to hearing from you

 

 

Kevin

Kevin Davidson

Founder & CEO

The Property Angel