CASINO

PROPERTY MARKET

STICK OR TWIST

The tide is turning from a seller’s, to a buyer’s market

WORDS MARC DA SILVA Property Journalist

When the team at the Collins English Dictionary come together to decide on the 2020 Word of the Year, they’ll be spoiled for choice. But there will undoubtedly be a theme to the shortlist.

In 2019, it was ‘climate strike’ that topped the list, but in 2020 they can choose from any number of new words and phrases that have entered the everyday lexicon, not just of people here in the UK, but around the world: Self-isolation, social-distancing, lockdown, unprecedented, viral-load, panicbuying, hoarding, toilet-paper, Stay on, but these words will forever be tied to 2020 and beyond.

From the first, seemingly distant, reports of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, to the current, strange and difficult situation we find ourselves in now, the world has changed forever.

At the time of writing, over 900,000 people around the world have died of COVID-19, and millions more are living in various states of lockdown. In the UK, schools and businesses have reopened, but the new normal is still anything but, well, normal.

SALES COULD DECREASE BY 38%

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And while it may seem trivial in the face of such a vast, often terrifying, event, it’s important to carry on. For us, that means scrutinising the property market, discussing what has happened, what is happening and, if possible, thinking about what will happen.

THE (STRANGEST) YEAR

Following the Conservative victory in the December 2019 election (which feels like an extremely long time ago), the UK and London Alert, Rule of Six…the list could go

property markets were enjoying a wave of optimism. The Evening Standard reported that developers broke ground at 5,275 new home sites in the last quarter of 2019, up 12 per cent on the previous three months. Sales rose by a fifth to 5,684, the highest since the first quarter of 2018, while completions were up at 6,153.

In the first quarter or 2020, it’s a very different story. In one of the first major pieces of analysis of the property market in the age of coronavirus, consultancy Knight