Deals of the day for 22 September 2021
September 22, 2021Is Birmingham better than Manchester for buy to let?
October 4, 2021Nick Garner here, founder of Invesmore.
I’ve been asking myself an important question: is it better to pause and wait for a market cooldown, or keep looking & buying?
The reason I care about these big questions; get your timing right and you’re more likely to see capital growth and therefore a good return on your investment. Of course, there are numerous caveats including buying in the right area, the right kind of property, having the right kind of tenants and so on.
But setting aside all of these other basic considerations, if you get the timing right with the property cycle, you’re far more likely to do well because capital growth tends to affect all reasonable properties within whole areas.
A while ago I wrote about the 18 year property cycle and how this particular cycle coincides with the end of the long-term debt cycle, which also coincides with Brexit in the UK. We have a confluence of three extremely stressful events, which can only end up with a challenging outcome. My article: https://nicholashgarner.medium.com/uk-18-year-property-cycle-and-the-end-of-the-long-term-debt-cycle-fb4aa4abadce
We have a confluence of three extremely stressful events, which can only end up with a challenging outcome.
I previously made the mistake of believing the market would cool down due to Covid. i.e. it would cause massive financial hardship, which would then drive supply of property and therefore be attractive to investors. I hadn’t factored in the massive amount of government financial stimulus which is now driving the lower end of the market in certain areas.
We are now seeing an intensely competitive ‘first-time buyer’ market in Greater Manchester. Arguably because:
- Large proportions of the population with spare cash saved up during Covid.
- Investors are very active
- There are government schemes to support first-time buyers
Of course, that first-time buyer market isn’t ‘hot’ everywhere. For example in the north-east of England, property prices have declined by 35% in real terms from 2007.
This article from BBC highlights the issues facing one homeowner: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58747051
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BBC: “Steve bought at the top of the frenzied 2005-07 boom, but has been unlucky on multiple fronts – says Prof Paul Cheshire of the Centre for Economic Performance at London School of Economics (LSE).
“The British housing market is notorious for booms and busts, but the cheaper sector in Middlesbrough was one of the most volatile of all.”
Prices went up by 50% in just two years, then fell off a cliff – says the professor – with Steve buying at the very top of that boom, having been drawn in by the developer’s offer to pay his deposit.
“He then got caught in a market collapse and was lumbered with an escalating service charge.”
And in the years after the worst financial crisis, Middlesbrough’s housing market has not seen strong rising demand – says Prof Cheshire – so prices haven’t risen as fast as in other parts of the country.
The reality of homeownership for Steve has been nothing like he imagined. His dream became a nightmare.
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These screen grabs show capital decline in Middlesbrough from 2007 to beginning of 2021.
Essentially, anyone who bought property in that area has lost around 35% of the true inflation-adjusted value of that property. Data is from office of National statistics and land registry and interpreted in our system.
Around 15% of the overall market is what I call ‘investable’. It turns out Manchester has been a huge hotspot. Why? Manchester seems to have the most functional citywide economy of all the major cities in the north of England. And this ends up being reflected in house prices, where people compete to live in this city, thus driving up the price of property.
Manchester screen grab showing capital growth in real inflation-adjusted terms from 2007 to early 2021.
And in case you wondered, Liverpool hasn’t done very well.
Liverpool as a whole shows poor long-term capital growth.
Long-term capital growth across ‘greater Birmingham’ has been relatively patchy. And overall not wildly impressive.
It’s important to say that long-term capital growth is more of a ‘long-term’ indicator for how an area is doing. You will have short-term rises in certain markets. For example in 2019, Blackpool had some substantial growth, but long-term real values had declined by around 35 to 40%.
Whenever I analyse capital growth, I look at the long-term picture first. If that checks out reasonably well, then I look at capital growth over the last five, three and one years and from there I can build up a general view of how capital growth will unfold in the years to come. Very simply, if the city has done well in the long-term, it’s likely to be resilient in difficult times. And, the opposite is true.
Back to Manchester and reiterating a few points.
It turned out the market became incredibly heated because:
- First-time buyers have money to purchase
- There’s very little supply on the market
- Investors implicitly know that Manchester is the right place to buy, so they’re competing
All of this means that good properties constantly sell above asking price and will typically sell within three or four days.
The impending crash
People believe with the end of furlough, something like 1,000,000 people will be off the scheme, triggering huge rounds of redundancies. In theory, these redundancies might force more supply onto the housing market and drive property prices down.
One of the problems with sitting on the side-lines waiting for furlough redundancies to take effect, is the two-year lag between cause and effect. For example 2008 crash saw the market bottom out two years later.
Sitting above everything is the spectre of inflation. we’ve already seen the first cycle of inflation. And in my view we will probably see inflation grind along for another eight or 10 years. Based on historic precedents, inflation tends not to be constant. Just as with current inflationary pressures, these work in bursts. I.e. cost of utilities going up.
This decade is similar to the nineteen forties. There was a calamitous event: World War II, high inflation and a rebuilding of economies. In these circumstances one might think property in the UK would have gone down in value, but it turns out the opposite was true. (See chart below)
Another inflationary decade was the nineteen seventies, and we can see periods with declining house price affordability.
It’s worth reading the Schroders article: https://www.schroders.com/en/insights/economics/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/
What would stimulate the housing market over the next four years?
Politics…and inflation driving people out of cash and into stable assets like property.
Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/ge2019-how-did-demographics-affect-the-result/
Homeowners tend to vote Conservative. An important point when thinking about the housing market in the UK for the next four or five years.
Where would Manchester prices ‘top out’?
Whenever I look at house price data, I prefer to use median house price rather than average house prices. A median number is the ‘middle number’ i.e. let’s say you’ve got 100 numbers, the median one is the 50th largest number. Whereas average is just adding up all the numbers and dividing by 100. In property, averages tend to get very distorted because you can have an outlier property which sells for a huge amount of money and distorts the rest of the statistics.
London versus Manchester as of Q4 2020:
- Greater Manchester (2,820,000 people) median house prices £195,000. Average affordability: 5.5 times earnings
- Greater London (8,900,000 people) median house prices £495,000. average affordability: 12 times earnings
Let’s say median house prices in Manchester rise to roughly half that of London i.e. £250,000 from £195,000… My rationale being:
- There is a natural stamp duty threshold £250,000
- Affordability in greater Manchester would have to decline to perhaps seven times earnings
- The Manchester market is likely to be fuelled by investor speculation, which is in turn driven by what looks like a very solid long-term economic growth
- Manchester has outperformed the UK average on gross domestic product growth. Ref: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/regionaleconomicactivitybygrossdomesticproductuk/1998to2019
What about now?
A good way of understanding interest in property is to look at a service called Google trends. It shows the approximate search volumes for certain key phrases the people search for on Google. For example, the key phrase ‘Rightmove’ shows that people are searching the name of the website to look at property.
Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=rightmove note: the seasonal dips coincide with Christmas.
and the same applies for Zoopla
Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=zoopla
As you see from the screen grabs, interest in Property is intense.
Yet, transactions have remained stable even though we’ve had a stamp duty holiday, which in theory stimulated the market.
And when you look at the long-term picture, there are about 2/3rds number of transactions occurring on average versus 2007. However, there was a recent massive spike in transactions due to stamp duty holiday.
Dip in house prices
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/july2021
You can see there has been a slight tailing off in house prices for July 2021. This is the most recent data I can get hold of.
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/july2021
This chart above shows the percentage change in price over time. Essentially up means the market is going up and down means the opposite. 2008 is a good example of market decline. And now we are seeing an overall decline in property prices from the peak in June 2021
However, this is just average house price data. It doesn’t factor in house prices at the lower end of the market. Unfortunately I can only give you an anecdotal view of what’s going on:
- Manchester: it’s extraordinarily busy. Good properties are going within days and always for above the asking price.
- There are a huge number of Hong Kong Chinese investors competing for property in the first time investor/buy to let market.
- But, this intense competition only applies to properties in the £100,000 to £200,000 range, for houses in areas like Droylsden, Leigh and other lower-middle-class areas with low crime, , access to central Manchester and good local amenities.
Putting all this together
- I think inflation is a huge threat which will drive investors into real estate
- When people own their own homes, they more likely to vote Conservative. Arguably the motivation for a government is to stay in government. So I believe this government will do whatever it can to promote homeownership. That doesn’t mean more homes, it means sustaining high house prices.
- Supply will probably remain very restricted due to stamp duty. And… If there is restricted supply and high demand, prices remain high and therefore voters feel happy.
- Undoubtedly we’ve got high inflation on the way if you believe in historical precedents
- Don’t think that any old area will do when it comes to investment. In my opinion, based on long-term capital growth, I think only around 15% of areas are genuinely likely show capital growth ahead of inflation in the next 10 years. Manchester is my prime area.
- Overall, I think anyone interested in investing should ignore the possibility of a major market cooldown.
- The ‘great market crash’ will properly happen in four years, which would coincide with long-term Brexit problems coming to a head, governments having to push on with stagflation in order to water down sovereign debt and the natural end of a very consistent 18 year property cycle.
In final conclusion:
As much as it hurts to pay above the asking price for property in Manchester, I absolutely believe median house prices will end up somewhere around £250,000 in the next four years. Or in other words, I see at least another 25% real capital growth when adjusting for inflation.
Other sources
- Average house prices in Greater Manchester are £200,000, https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Greater-Manchester-house-prices.html
- Average house prices in outer Greater London, £545,000 https://www.plumplot.co.uk/City-Outer-London-house-prices.html
