Quick market update / comment

Tuesday was a corker. Daily Express headlines saying that the property market is set to surge this year, sadly they were narrow mindedly talking about prices only, and on the same day the FT were talking about prices set to fall.

I’m guessing that overall we know who to believe even if we want to believe the paper that IS Lady Di.

But it sums up the issues puzzling any buyer or seller but the balance seems to be coming out with buyers mostly wanting to get on with it and most sellers existing in a world of inertia needing a notional interest rate rise to smack them across the face and get them moving.

What I can tell you is that a couple of weeks in it’s beginning to look a touch better here in London. A strange confluence of events, namely mortgage rates bottoming out, dollar pegged buyers from India Russia China and the US here in strength, Eurozone buyers worried about the future of their currency and looking for a safe home for their money, and the fact that SDLT is going to 5% for transactions over £1m (not that uncommon in cent London), means that perhaps a market that never really kicks off until the end of Jan might just be perking up a bit earlier.

More soon.