Black Brick’s Camilla Dell - FTWeekend Digital Festival property webinar
Black Brick’s Camilla Dell participated in the FTWeekend Digital Festival property webinar, discussing the past 12 months in the property market and what can be expected from 2021. The panellists were:
What next for the property market? - Camilla Dell
Has the SDLT holiday benefited those buying in Prime Central London?
“The reality is the stamp duty holiday has mostly benefited people buying outside of London and those buying lower value properties. Effectively what’s it’s meant for most of our clients purchasing in PCL is a £15,000 saving. That’s a nice to have, but isn’t going to be a deciding factor when purchasing a property for several million.
The stamp duty saving so far in PCL, I’m not sure it’s had a massive impact. What’s more of a concern to a lot of my overseas clients is the stamp duty change that’s coming imminently and that’s the 2% surcharge that arrives on the 1st April for anyone purchasing property here that’s not a tax resident. That is a concern and I think ordinarily before a stamp duty change comes in, you would expect to see this huge spike of activity of transactions take place as people try and beat the stamp duty deadline.
I think the big difference this time around is obviously this change that is coming, it’s not a blanket change that’s going to affect everybody. It’s only affecting overseas buyers and unfortunately as much as overseas buyers may have liked to have got their transactions done in Q1 this year, travel restrictions have meant that a lot of them have been unable to. Having said that, the proof will be in the data, we’ll have to see what happens when the data comes out to see whether that spike happened or not, we have had a couple of very motivated clients that we signed up at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, from the US. They’ve actually made the decision to travel and come to London to see the property that they want to buy, and we’ve got those deals underway, hoping to exchange and complete before the 31st March deadline. I just wonder whether they’re in the minority and we’ll just have to see what the data shows when once we get through this quarter.”
Have people that were looking to move home already moved?
“A lot of people have made their move and that’s one of the reasons why we saw unprecedented activity last year, right the way through to the beginning of this year. Having said that, there are still people that haven’t moved yet and are struggling to find the right property. Stock has been an issue. As good as the market has been in terms of activity and people feeling confident and wanting to move, at the same time, the supply of stock hasn’t necessarily kept up with demand, particularly where the demand is greatest – for family houses and areas close to green spaces. Also, in the pandemic, sellers have been fearful about putting their properties on the market, having lots of people in through the door to view. I think a lot of people have moved, there’s still people looking to move, but are struggling to find the right property. We’ve been doing quite a lot of off-market transactions at Black Brick, making some private approaches to people to see if they’re interested in selling and we’ve actually had a really good response to that, because there are people that want to sell, but they don’t necessarily want to open their house up to lots of viewings.
I’m a firm believer that London is going to bounce back. When the city reopens and everything that’s great about London resumes, if people really have moved out properly and let go of their London bases, I think that’s a bit of a risk because ultimately the city will come back and employers do want their employees to collaborate – maybe not five days a week anymore, but certainly come together and be in an office. Collaboration is really important.”
Where are the hotspots in London?
“We saw a lot of demand over the last 12 months with domestic clients who’ve been looking to upsize to family houses with gardens, but still in London. The areas where we’ve seen a lot of activity have been Hampstead, St John’s Wood, Dulwich, Richmond, Wimbledon – not your traditional core PCL areas – and it’s all been houses. Those markets become very heated, prices have risen and it’s been a good time to sell if you’re in the market to sell in those ‘prime domestic house markets’. When you look at more PCL areas like Mayfair, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, and certainly when you look at the new build market and the flat market – flats without outside space – it’s sort of been a little bit like tumbleweed.”
Do I buy a holiday home or not?
“If you’re buying something for lifestyle use, that has to be the focus, as it’s really difficult to time markets like that. I think it’s much more about finding the right property, working out realistically how much you’re going to use it and if it is somewhere you’re planning on using for weekends, a good rule of thumb is you don’t want a holiday home to be more than 1.5 – 2 hours away, otherwise the reality is, you just won’t go there on the weekends. So I think if you’re buying a holiday home, yes it’s interesting to look at the investment aspect and how rentable it is.”
Get in touch
Black Brick Property Solutions LLP
15 Bruton Place, Mayfair,
London, W1J 6LU
+44 (0) 20 3141 9861
Camilla Dell, Managing Partner
+44 (0) 20 3141 9860
+44 (0) 7887 827 176
camilla.dell@black-brick.com