Property Market Comment with Soffi Searle of Searles Consultancy

IT’S all over.

That is 2017.

I am not sure we need to give a backward glance to the year that has just passed, especially in the first week of the New Year.

We need not mention the Lettings Market doldrums of 2017 here, that – like clockwork – came and went throughout the year as they have always done.

Nor should we applaud the good times in the year of 2017 that broke up the doldrums in such a contrary Market.

Like any business, the Lettings Market peaks and troughs in a year, usually without any rhyme or reason, but it has ever been thus.

Now – especially this New Year - we need to listen to one of the great wordsmiths:

Hope smiles from the threshold

of the year to come whispering

‘It will be happier’ (Lord Alfred Tennyson)

For all of us in this first week of 2018, these few words should be imprinted on our minds so that we look forward to the New Year and smile from all the thresholds that we pass over during the year.

As a Member of the Association of Residential Letting Agents for the last 25 years, I am pleased to see that great minds think alike as I quote from David Cox, Chief Executive, ARLA Propertymark: “There are a number of hurdles on the horizon but scope to remain hopeful. With further interest rate rises expected, Brexit negotiations to overcome and the cost of living escalating, the property market could see significant changes.”

None of us really like change though and, often, not knowing what is round the corner can be scary and make us anxious.

But, for those of us who serve the Lettings Market and the industry, we have always had hope and embrace the unknown with our sleeves rolled up in true fighting British spirit.

The rumblings of those “significant changes” to the Lettings Market from the Housing Minister, Mr Alok Sharma, (who is the sixth new Housing Minister since 2010) may make us all – Landlords, Tenants and Agents alike – more than a little nervous but we will do our best and as Lord Alfred Tennyson suggests, have hope – with a smile.