#33 - Property crash in 2023?

What I’m watching

Continuing my binge on public speaking content, I came across a short video by TED. Thought-provoking as many TED videos are.

Resource of the week

I’ve been using TurboScan for at least 5 years to scan documents using my phone and I can’t live without it. Very intuitive interface and is able to airdrop/email pdfs direct to my laptop.

Quote

"The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable."

Seneca

Thoughts

The property market is undeniably cooling off in the wake of the mini-budget and interest rate rises. I made a video comparing the ROI showing that it’s much more difficult to make the numbers work in the current conditions. Demand is massively down on the 5-year average and there is a higher supply of properties coming onto the market compared to this time last year.

Having said that, it’s coming off a very high base in which, after lockdowns, we saw property growing at a faster rate than at any time since the financial crisis. Having spoken to a number of people working in the mortgage industry and looking at swap rates, I do see mortgage rates slightly easing back going into 2023, to around 4%. This is still higher than we’ve been used to and in most likelihood will mean prices slowing down next year. It’s very unlikely that we’ll see a yoy decline but it might mean some opportunities. It probably also means we’ll see a net decrease of private landlords in the sector, which could mean a continued period of a shortage of rental properties. Particularly in the southeast.

In other news, there’s finally some movement with the property I have going through conveyancing, after a lot of chasing and my estate agent AND broker threatening to drive down the seller solicitor’s office they’ve decided to send paperwork through. Given that I placed the offer in April and it’s now Nov, it did cross my mind to demand another £5k or so off. Since the market conditions have changed, but I don’t want the hassle and thought better of it. I know if the opposite happened in the market (as in property sentiment went up) in these 6 months it’s very likely the seller would’ve demanded more, I’ve seen it happen frequently. At this point, I just want to drag it over the line.

Apart from that, this week was mostly spent preparing for the upcoming talk. I visited the university campus last week and even though it was my first time there, I felt nostalgic about being a student again and was nice to be in that environment. It also makes it very real, time has gone so quick, it’s on Thursday and still have a lot to do! What helps with the anxiety around that is something I read in the book ‘Getting Past No’ which is about negotiation. One key lesson I remember is that to be effective at negotiation, it’s vital to be prepared and do your homework. So I’m taking that philosophy for the talk.

So next time you read this newsletter, the talk would’ve happened and hopefully, I can give you some highlights and things I learnt from the experience.

Have a good week!

Other stuff

My free Skillshare class on starting a business-oriented TikTok channel is now live.

Hans