What Brexit means to us!

If I had a pound for every time someone has asked me what effect Brexit will have on the local housing market I would have £48 pounds by now. If I knew the answer I would be a whole lot richer! 

All I can tell you with certainty is what is happening right now, since the result is in and the decision (seems) to have been made. NOTHING. There is no mass panic, no knee jerk reactions, no one is pulling out of running sales, worried about a crash and people don’t seem nervous about putting their houses on the market to sell. If anything business is booming. 

June was the best month of the year so far for us with the most new properties coming onto the market, the most sales and the most exchanges and completions. Whether it continues we will have to wait and see, but from my point of view I will try at least to make hay whilst the sun is shining. 

On the day the referendum result was announced it was a bit of a squeaky bum moment with billions being wiped off of the FTSE and the pound falling fast. The FTSE seems to have recovered now and whilst the pound is still down it at least looks stable. It seemed as though it was the markets reacting to the fact that once again all of the experts got the result wrong when they predicted a narrow victory for the remain camp. 

The outlook doesn’t look so great though with predictions of a possible recession and tough times ahead. The governor of the Bank of England has even suggested reducing interest rates which seems unbelievable seeing as they are only at 0.5% now. But I can’t stress enough that on the coal face, nothing has changed and whilst a lot of people are talking about the consequences of Brexit, the people that matter i.e the buyers and sellers of properties locally, either don’t care or aren’t worried. 

I may be wrong but I think that a pretty big chunk of the leave vote was the electorate sticking 2 fingers up to the establishment and politicians. People are fed up with the status quo of big businesses getting away with tax evasions whilst Eton educated millionaires tell us we are all in it together! This same group of people could now be the ones who are ignoring the continuing media scare campaigns telling us all how bad it is going to be and just getting on with day to day life. 

One thing that the referendum campaign has taught us is that you can’t believe the statistics. Every time one group stated something the other side completely contradicted it with another set of figures so perhaps people are thinking, why should we believe them now? 

There is always the risk that the London property bubble with burst and that could inevitably lead to trouble here. We have long been an area where people like to move to when moving out of London, but even in this case I think we will be OK. 

Compared to other traditional commuter counties such as Hertfordshire and Surrey, Essex offers a better commute in to the City or Docklands, cheaper housing, excellent schools and our fabulous coastline so I believe we will still be an extremely attractive proposition for these people looking to move out of the city and we may even become even more popular if people cannot afford the other counties. 

So as I mentioned in my last blog, obviously not everyone voted for where we find ourselves, but in the Great British spirit (take note the England football team, come on the WELSH!) we seem to have rolled up our sleeves, got on with it and made the best of the situation or we all have our head in the sand? 

Lets watch this space…..

Thsi article is by Rob at Scott & Stapleton.
Tel: 01702 471155

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