What will a new PM mean for homebuyers?
A change of prime minister brings something as reliable as the tide: predictions. Within hours, the airwaves will fill with forecasts about what the new leader will mean for interest rates, for stamp duty, for the housing market, for mortgages. Most will be educated guesses dressed as certainty, and a fair number will contradict each other by the next morning.
For the individual deciding whether they can buy a home, the predictions truly matter far less than the volume around them suggests.
Since that 2016 referendum, this country has worked its way through Brexit, a pandemic, a mini-budget that frightened the markets, and five prime ministers, and is now lining up a sixth. Through every one of those upheavals, people carried on buying and selling homes, and the average UK property is worth around £270,000 today, higher than it was when the churn began. The market never waited for political calm.
That does not mean policy is irrelevant. Stamp duty thresholds matter. Schemes for first-time buyers matter. The Renters' Rights Act has already reshaped the ground beneath every tenant in England.
Add to that asking prices falling by 0.6% to £376,191, the steepest June drop Rightmove has recorded in fourteen years; a war in the Middle East that drove oil and gas prices up and pushed mortgage rates back above 5.6% on a five-year fix; and buyer demand running below this time last year. Stagnation, uncertainty, upheaval at the very top: that is the story being told.
It is not, however, the story I have been seeing.
I have spent nearly four decades in residential property, and I now spend my days at tenant2owner talking to renters who want to buy. From where I sit, the gap between the headlines and what people are actually doing is very wide, so I thought I'd offer a view from behind the scenes.
Sales agreed have held broadly steady, and in several regions they are ahead of last year, even as the demand soften. That combination matters. The casual browsers have stepped back, but the serious buyers have not.
In other words, a change in who is PM will have little to no impact on serious buyers.