Home moves to shrink by 200,000 following Brexit vote, says L&G chief
Legaly & General Surveying Services MD says market is still 'fragile'
The Brexit vote may lead to some 200,000 transactions being knocked off the number of homes sold this year according to Legal and General Building Services’ managing director Steve Goodall.
Speaking at a recent conference organised by Mortgage Finance Gazette, Goodall (pictured, below) said the UK long-term average was 1.5 million transactions a year, topping out at 1.6 million during the “heady heights” of 2006/7 before the financial crisis, then dipping down to 900,000 and now running at 1.2 million.
“Because of what happened over the summer – i.e. the referendum vote for the UK to leave Europe – this year we night see a flatlining of transactions,” he said.
“The equivalent number of transactions over the last three months may have actually dropped to around one million per annum.”
Goodall also said transactions should be much higher overall, pointing out that current levels of transaction should be measured against the growing number of households in the UK. Therefore, he calculates, the market should be running at 1.7 or 1.8 million transactions a year not 1.2 million.
“There are more people yet there are fewer housing transactions,” he said.
The conference was attended by a mixed bag of industry leaders including Karl Knipe from Hertfordshire-based Kings Group and David Westgate, the recently-installed new chief executive of Andrews Property Group.
During the debate Westgate said he thought changing demographics including greater labour mobility plus the building industry’s lack of house building are why transaction levels remains weak. “The house builders are drip feeding property into the market because fits in with their financial aspirations or their profit targets,” he said.