glentree.co.uk

For years, Rightmove plc has been the undisputed heavyweight of the UK property market — a digital Goliath built on the backs (and budgets) of estate agents. Let’s be blunt: agents have funded the empire. That steady stream of subscription fees has helped create a £3.3–£3.4 billion giant with operating margins of around 66–68% — eye-watering numbers even by tech standards. Few businesses, digital or otherwise, enjoy that kind of pricing power.

After months of febrile speculation and doom-laden predictions ahead of the autumn Budget—featuring an ensemble cast of Wealth Taxes, Exit Taxes, and eye-watering hikes to Capital Gains and Inheritance Tax—the final script turned out to be rather more modest. In fact, for most, it was positively tolerable by comparison. The much-discussed Mansion Tax, pencilled in for 2028, is far less fearsome than first imagined.

If life is like a box of chocolates, then residential property this year has been a particularly mixed assortment — some delicious, some nutty, and a few best left untouched. It would be fair to say that this has not been an easy year for the Residential Property Market. That said, I struggle to share the media’s apparent enthusiasm for declaring a cataclysmic collapse in values. In reality, the low to middle markets have behaved with surprising decorum.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, as they say, and in an era of creeping inflation, job insecurity and the menacing spectre of tax rises, it’s tempting to look back and reminisce about buying a 5-bedroom Georgian house in Hammersmith for £2000, as a friend of mine did in the 1960s. Earnings were proportionately lower in that era, so all things being equal, it’s similar to the contemporary salary/mortgage ratio of ‘3 to 3.5 times salary’.

You’d think that the Prime Minister and Chancellor would be ‘punch drunk’ from the ‘kicking’ they are getting from the Electorate and would try to conjure a slightly more appetising dish in the forthcoming autumn Budget, than Mansion Tax (MT). No, not these two ‘numb nuts’, instead, by all accounts, they are planning to impose a MT, which will greatly disadvantage some and irritate others, so that doubling down on the incompetence of these two ‘goons’, is carrying on apace.

How long have discerning apartment buyers thirsted for a new development which has all the overtures of the best in Mayfair but located locally in The Bishops Avenue, arguably one of the best-known roads in the world? Wait no longer, my good friends, the exciting scheme – Bishops Avenue Gardens – is now a reality and almost upon us.

Fairy tales are for children, but they’re also told by estate agents. Like Hollywood, the property market has always been built on dreams. How many times have you seen a dreary hovel in Cricklewood, where even the mice have hunchbacks, described as ‘characterful’ and ‘with potential’? TV shows like ‘Escape to the Country’ and ‘Location, Location, Location’ rake in the viewers, exploiting our peculiar obsession with property and the fantasy of ever-spiraling equity.

In Kemi ‘Badenough’s’ closing speech at the Conservative Conference in Manchester this year, she ‘set the hares running’ by talking about abolishing Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) if her Party were to gain power at the next Election.

Yawn and stretch, the government have appointed a new housing Czar in place of the thoroughly discredited Angie Rayner, former Deputy Prime Minister, who no doubt is ‘licking her wounds’ for having been caught with her ‘fingers in the till’. Witnessing such gluttonous behaviour Clearly, she had learnt nothing from the free gifts’ controversy in September 2024, when she accepted all manner of goodies from Lord Alli.

The problem with having a thoroughly inexperienced Chancellor and a properly ‘woodenheaded’ Prime Minister, is that they are learning the job ‘on the hoof’ and we are all going to pay a hefty price for this ineptitude.