Month: December 2019

A landslide Conservative victory at the polls has injected fresh confidence in the prime residential market after a period of stagnation.

Prime central London agents have reported a string of multi-million deals less than 24 hours after the result.

Boutique luxury residential agent Aston Chase confirmed two sales on the morning of Friday 13 December – a £3.85m Marylebone flat and a £4.9m house in St John’s Wood from a British buyer in the US.

Aston Chase founder Mark Pollack said: “These deals are indicative of the renewed confidence in the future of the UK economy following a resounding Conservative victory.

“The market has clearly breathed a huge sigh of relief and I suspect we can now expect a significantly increased volume of transactions in the first quarter of 2020, following the pent up demand that had built up over the last three years.”

He noted that buyer sentiment had begun to pick-up in the run-up to the general election, with another £4.65m transaction, as the polls pointed to a Conservative majority.

Buyers that embraced an element of risk were rewarded with favourable currency rates.

Trevor Abrahmsohn, founder of luxury estate agency Glentree International said he closed one £25m sale prior to the election to an Eastern European buyer and a £28m sale to an Asian buyer the morning of the result.

Abrahmsohn said: “I try to be ahead of the game. I phoned people and said, ‘Listen, what are you waiting for? You’ve got the green light, there has been a seismic change.’

“You have ten years of stable, political, fiscal economic environment, with Brexit now a thing of the past. There is nothing to hold back the economy, the residential property market, it is all systems go.”

Jonathan Vandermolen, chief executive and founder of Vandermolen Real Estate, said the capital is particularly attractive to international buyers right now.

“With the reduction in values and the gain in currency, London now looks cheap,” said Vandermolen.

He also predicted a surge at the lower end of the market, with renewed confidence inspiring buyers across the board.

“For the last quarter,” he added, “there has been a lack of activity where sellers have not wanted to recognise what the market has been telling them their assets are worth and they have been hiding under a Brexit-General Election blanket.”

He said political certainty will now see this move forward, driving sales but not necessarily increased sales values, “as the market is still overpriced”.

Developer London Square said it will look to double its new homes pipeline to £2.6bn following the result, with a goal to deliver up to 1,000 new homes a year.

Chief executive Adam Lawrence said: “This is a time for great optimism and we anticipate a post-Brexit bounce in the market once the uncertainty of the past three years has lifted.

“We will now be pushing ahead for significant investment in the land market off the back of this result the next two years, ready for the pent-up demand that will most certainly emerge.”

To send feedback, e-mail emma.rosser@egi.co.uk or tweet @EmmaARosser or @estatesgazette

Howard Kayman and Simon Rosenblatt have been promoted.

Top-end London estate agency Aston Chase has promoted two of its stalwarts to Associate Director level.

Howard Kayman (pictured on the right) has been with the firm for 22 years, working in the House Sales department since 1997.

Simon Rosenblatt (left) has been in Aston Chase’s Flat Sales department for the last 12 years. He’s brokered more than £800m-worth of deals since joining Mark Pollack’s firm in 2007.

Both Kayman and Rosenblatt have been heavily involved in the agency’s charitable sidelines. Kayman even set a Guinness World Record (unwittingly) in 2014, for solo 24-hour endurance karting – raising over £30,000 for Help for Heroes in the process. He’s also down multiple Norwood Cycling Challenges. Rosenblatt co-Chairs the annual Norwood Poker 100 tournament (which routinely raises £50k+ for the charity), and has completed four marathons, 12 half-marathons and a few of the bike rides for good measure.

Mark Pollack, Director and Co-founder at Aston Chase: “Aston Chase are proud to announce the appointments of both Howard Kayman and Simon Rosenblatt as Associate Directors. Simon and Howard are amongst the top agents operating in prime Central London and have consistently demonstrated a desire to provide the best possible service to our clients in a friendly, professional and enthusiastic fashion.”

Howard Kayman, Associate Director at Aston Chase: “I am thrilled to have been appointed as an Associate Director atAston Chase. Having been a member of the team for over 22 years I feel part of ‘the Aston Chase family’ and am looking forward to continuing my career in this new and exciting capacity.”

Simon Rosenblatt, Associate Director at Aston Chase: “I am proud of my contribution over the past 12 years working alongside my colleagues all of whom are leading figures in the industry. In my new role as an Associate Director I am looking forward to continuing our team’s success and to further progressing my own career at Aston Chase.”

We are looking back over Aston Chase’s third quarter 2019 activity at a unique time in British politics. Brexit has now been delayed twice, and we’re counting down to the third General Election in four and a half years. Depending on who the next Prime Minister is, we’ll either be likely leaving the EU by the end of January, or following yet another period of re-negotiation, voting in a second referendum.

However despite a continuation of political and economic uncertainty throughout the summer months, we nevertheless saw a surprisingly high level of activity – a remarkable 120% increase in total sales concluded compared to the same period in 2018 (£77m vs £35m), and an 63% increase compared to Q2 of 2019 (£77m vs £47m). This showed that despite the prevailing circumstances, London remained a place of relative global stability, and of course a world class centre for education, amenities and transport. A total of sixteen deals were concluded, with nine exchanging in September alone.

In terms of buyer demographics, we concluded 25% of these deals to British buyers (down from 60% in Q2), 25% to Hong Kong buyers and the remainder to buyers from China, Australia, the Middle East and Switzerland.

The main takeaways from this period were;

• The continued influx of Hong Kong based buyers in to the London market, due to both extreme political uncertainty and exchange rate gains for non-Sterling buyers
• International buyers in general taking advantage of both exchange rate gains and price corrections in the London market
• Domestic buyers cautiously continuing their return to the market, albeit only for long term purchases at prices which reflect not only where the market currently is, but also factoring in further potential uncertainty.
• An increasing number of enquiries from non-property portal sources
• An increased number of deals outside areas which we would have traditionally considered to be our core operating post codes

On the last two points above, we have written before about the increasing influence of Google, Facebook and Instagram on property advertising. It’s a trend which we’re seeing as increasingly instrumental in both how we market our clients properties, and how we think about overall marketing budgets in relation to both print media and the two main property portals, Zoopla and Rightmove. Taking the last quarter as an example, if 75% of buyers are from overseas, and many of them aren’t aware of the main property portals, then it makes sense to try and focus marketing spend on driving traffic to our own website, and that means utilising both social media and Google more than ever before.

In a similar vein, once a foreign buyer has found their way to Aston Chase, thanks to semi-open source platforms like www.lonres.com, excellent inter agency relationships and more than ever, the social media presence of an increasing number of brokers, finding these buyers properties outside of our traditional core post codes has become easier. Our recent deal at The Corinthia Apartments was a perfect example of all of the above situations in play, and one which we are expecting to see more of in the future. Rather than deal with a multitude of broker, buyers are increasingly looking for a single person to cover their property needs – as a lot of them are used to in their own countries.

To conclude, whilst some domestic buyers have tentatively dipped their toes back in to the market so far in 2019, there is undoubtedly still a good amount of pent up demand from more cautious buyers. Whilst thus far they have lacked the confidence to buy due to ongoing political and economic uncertainty, the result of the General Election could well change this. Whilst tight supply has become more of an issue as 2019 has progressed, this might free up if vendors feel that the market is moving again.

On the flip side, foreign buyers have had a decent run at a relatively inexpensive London market. With all the major political parties announcing an increase in Stamp Duty for foreign buyers, we might see this trend slow in the early part of 2020, especially if there’s a strengthening of Sterling against the Dollar and the Euro.

Time will tell, but if the last couple of years has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected!