Richard Donnell and Charlie on today’s Zoopla Index

Published today 29 January 2024, Zoopla’s December House Price index.

Charlie interviews Zoopla Research Director Richard Donnell on what it means.

Zoopla’s HPI:
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/discover/property-news/house-price-index/

Listen to the audio podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2109129/14399389

Follow Richard on X: https://x.com/richard_donnell

Find me on my website: https://mhwc.co.uk

All my other links: https://linktr.ee/movinghomewithcharlie

Find your next home and agent on https://bestagent.co.uk

Hello everybody thank you for your patience welcome and thank you for waiting and welcome very special welcome to Richard donnal who is the director of research at zuper who’s kindly agreed to join me today on the moving H Charlie channel to talk about zup’s house price index published for December now I’ve

Had some fantastic questions from everybody um on X uh uh now what I’d like to just remind everyone is that Richard is not responsible for everything that happens at suler about how the website works and that kind stuff ruper ruper Richard not Rupert Richard uh you

Are very much on the data and Analysis side is that right yeah yeah we do have some questions about and I know you get these all the time about the uh automatic valuation algorithm yeah how it works a few questions on that but what I wanted to start with is to just I

Would like to bring up your report on the screen and I I’m going to start from the bottom because I think you put the most important part at the bottom always do that you got to read the whole thing you got to read the whole thing everyone

You’ve got to read the whole thing so um I have linked to this in the description below if anyone would like to read the full thing himself but you really must read the whole thing and it’s interesting I’ve got a couple of headlines like two very extremely different headline takes on the same

Report which is worth pointing out to everyone at what that happens but let’s just start with what you said here I think it’s very important probably the most important thing everything you said let’s not get carried away we are still in a buyer’s market fact you said you

Were we locked in a buyer’s market recently um it’s good to see renewed activity I’m completely with you there any uptick in activity in transactions is welcome for everybody because without that liquidity it just makes moving so hard and really gets of people moving on with their lives um sorry I need

To that back on to just do SUB um last year mortgage rates fell in the first three months of the year which supported sales volumes and led to only modest price Falls to be discussed um we expect current mortgage rates to have same effect this year supporting sales volumes rather than impacting house

Prices y i i don’t disagree with that house prices will be kept in check by several factors now what you mean by that is that they they’re not going to be allowed to rise because of these factors a greater supply of homes for sale giving buyers more Choice

Especially for larger family homes as I’m am I right Richard that the increase in Supply is larger than the increase in demand at the moment it’s it’s it is at a percentage level I mean we’ve got I don’t know the exact number actually but we’ve got 22% more homes for sale now

Than we had a year ago I think there’s there’ll be way more people looking to buy property than there are homes well I need to I need to check these I need to check this actually Charlie but um okay you can’t really compare demand might be up 12%

And Supply is up 22% on the headline level Supply is rising more than demand but actually in aggregate terms there probably there’s probably more than 3 400,000 people potentially looking to buy a property so it’s all about then at a local level what’s for sale what’s not

For sale hence the points I’m making there about we can see there’s there’s quite a lot of four bed family houses that probably been on the market were on the market last year back on the market now and the question is how many of these buyers in the market doday actually want

To buy a four plus bed house with higher running cost bigger mortgage and so but I think just you know what really drove the big price Rises over the pandemic was the incredible scarcity of homes for sale and we’re now back to normal levels so buyers have got more choice and they

Know there’s more room to negotiate basically well it was a combination of the scarcity of homes for sale and the easy access to very cheap borrowing Y which of course was was was behind it um I think I’m very glad that you’ve also made this point and reminded this point

Half of those with a mortgage are yet to refinance onto a Higher mortgage rate keeping people price sensitive and focus on value yeah that’s so important not to to lose that a small but not insignificant number of sellers cutting their asking prices to attract interest continuing the 23 Trend and I thought

This was great in not great but like a fascinating uh fact close to one in four sellers in London is accepting more than 10% off the asking price in London in the Southeast um so that’s that’s what you’ve I mean I just wish some of the

Other some of the papers would lead with this sort of stuff we we had um let’s just show what we got the headlines just want to share this tab so London leads Rebound in home buyer demand as 2024 gets underway and I’ve already had so many people messaging me today and

Saying oh everything’s back the housing Market’s back everything’s back and you know and of course it’s headlines like that which you didn’t write which which are misleading I think and then but also equally other way the telegraph comes out from the same data sellers forced to slash asking prices as

Housing markets stagnates I mean two completely different headlines gleaned from exactly the same report that you published right I think but this is what tends to happen I think the it’s sort of uh because i’ I’ve written a few articles the first part of this year I I

Do think there’s a bit of ere exuberance appearing in the way we’re talking about the housing market um and it’s you know for me it it it doesn’t take you to adjust from super cheap money to four to five% mortgage rates is not it’s not a short adjustment period and you know

We’ll I’m sure we’ll debate the house prices thing but you know on our index most indices and again there’s a whole separate webinar to be done around indices but um um we just you prices didn’t fall and prices could have fall more last year there’s room for prices

To fall but the market didn’t fall maybe as much as we all thought and so for me that just means that prices take longer to adjust until prices and earnings get back align but look you’re absolutely right I mean if you read the full report there’s a whole load of different angles

In there I think it’s I think the other thing I’d say about London is London is the most sensitive to higher mortgage rates it’s the most expensive market so higher mortgage rates have a much bigger impact on demand than so if you’re buying up in in Warrington or Bolton or

Somewhere so I think I do think people have read the headlines they’ve seen that mortgage rates have fallen back down to say four and a half percent so I do think that’s probably brought some people into the market but people coming into the market is one thing the most

Important number that we track is really just how many deals are being agreed how many buyers and sellers are agreeing deals and as you say on average you know the discount to the asking price is 5% on our numbers it’s flattening out at that level but ultimately even if one

And four people people are having to take more than 10% off the asking price it’s probably just the asking price was unrealistic to start with frankly and so um they just had to accept the right price and uh so again there’s this whole piece which I think look other portals

Agents were all out there saying to sellers don’t get carried away you know there’s more chance of your home selling this year but you’ve still got to be realistic on price because buyers want to do deals basically I’m not sure the sellers are getting that memo though are they

They never but they always they never you know they not they never do but I mean it’s who wants to it’s always that hope value isn’t there basically if you you’re selling your home you know what you want to buy next yeah and so for

Every five or 10 grand you don’t get for your home you might have to put that on your mortgage and at four and a half% mortgage rates it’s slightly less expensive than five five and a half but it’s the um it’s just the housing market tends to adjust slowly and volumes tend

To take the hit more than prices um in the absence of you know a big economic recession and Rising unemployment um I I agree with you it’s slow and I think it’s really important to remind everyone that the how the market does react slowly even more slowly given the the

The fixes the greater number of fixes we have in this market than we did 15 years ago um and I accept your point that that uh you actually certainly zuper has been the most uh firm in saying be realistic on asking prices be realistic on asking

Prices and we saw in right mooves most recent prices that the asking prices are trending down they ticked up a bit in January over December but it was a big big sharp droping so asking prices are trending down which is a good thing for transactions um when you’ve got but this

Is this is probably the most important question I’d like to put to you because as you will know um the the practice of let’s call it extreme overvaluing by some AG agents to corner market share which we all know happens no one even denies that it happens i’ even had

Agents admitting that it happens coupled with the way I mean I looked at all the different headlines from your that came out on the back of your report today and the telegraph was the only actually Mark schoffman at state today also was pretty balanced about it but the telegraphs was

The only one that saw the negative side um but all of the other papers like yes it’s bouncing back everything’s good it’s going to be great there’s optimism and and so you know because of the The Hope value as you I think that’s a very good way of putting it um and because

When a a seller goes out and picks three agents and all three agents go yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and put a number on it that they all know is over optimistic and when you look collectively at the whole media uh messaging on on the housing market it’s it’s

Intentionally or not it’s always leans toward more po towards more positive now this is as you know if you follow any of my stuff you’ll know how passionate I am about this my worry about this is that the the the the risk of negative equity at certain times in the market

Cycle is higher than other times and nobody when they set out to buy no one that ends up in negative equity expected that they were going to and they thought they were paying a fair price and it was safe to do so and what it comes down to

Is actually what it’s the point that that we didn’t agree on in our last uh video and you join me was the and what you which you haven’t touched on in your report because it’s it’s obviously not part of what zuper does is to make economic forecast about the economy but given the

Um the increasingly gloomy outlook for jobs and the almost daily announcement of job cuts and John Lewis saying 11,000 job cuts and this morning uh Bloomberg doing the article about about big falls in December vacancies that kind of stuff does that not factor into your view of where the housing

Market because as far as I’m concerned we we’ve seen the first weakening of the market let’s not debate exactly how far it has or hasn’t gone yet but I see 2024 in terms of prices whatever does or doesn’t happen with transactions is going to get worse and and My worry is

The number of first-time buyers who are still going to overstretch themselves and find themselves in trouble so I I want more transactions as you do everyone else does but I do worry that that there’s not enough caution being urged I think it’s um like I you know we I’m still I’m not

Moving the forecast that we made of our index Falling by another 2% this year but actually I think as I we talked about last time I think I think house prices are just going to go sideways for you know quite a while um and because we just need to we need to repair

Affordability basically and my my HP hypothesis has always been that it’s about very very low house price growth and some nominal price Falls but real price Falls that then slowly sort of price people back into the market I think the challenge of the housing market over the last decade is it’s just

Being driven by more and more by people with money we’re not we haven’t been lending to Marginal buyers like we used to lend to so I’ve just WR an article on firsttime buyers and some of these government proposals and I think I’m right in saying that in 2007 6% of

Mortgages in the whole year were over 95 LTV last year it was 0.25 so you know we’re just not banks have not lenders just haven’t been that interested or incentivized to do high LTV lending a because of much tougher Capital controls introduced after the global financial crisis and also um this

All this mortgage affordability stress testing that we talked about before so it’s incredibly hard to take on a lot of Leverage in this market given these rules now you can make it work in the north of England Scotland more easily but it’s it’s n un impossible to get

Really high LTV Finance to make it work for a normal first-time buyer in London the southeast so the trouble is in the housing market of the last decade more buyers have just put down more Equity even firsttime buyers and so you get to a position I mean our estimates are that

Nine in 10 homeowners have got a more an LTV of less than 75 so there’s a lot of equity there to absorb any price Falls which for your argument I mean prices could fall more in fact you know we were at the more optimistic end of the last

Year and I was surprised that prices didn’t you know didn’t you know we said minus two actual minus two on our index or minus one on our index um when we said it prices before about to 5% so I think um I think but you’re absolutely right I

Mean if the economy weakens and employment increases that’s bad news for the housing market it weakens demand but equally I think the big difference as well to previous Cycles is Bank s pursue forbearance and the sign of repossessing someone is a sign of sort of failure Now

By Banks so banks will go to much longer lengths to make things work for the customer and again if the customers have a higher credit quality and put down a lot more Equity it’s much easier to work with someone who might be in some difficulties but have got a sort of an

80% or 70% loan to value mortgage than someone on a 99 going to 102% mortgage whose prospects don’t look so good so I I think um you know but the housing market is purely an extension of the economy so um but I think we’re just

Going to see very low to no house price growth for quite a while um which could mean real price Falls but again I I I don’t see unless there was a huge economic um catastrophe which no one is currently forecasting um that would lead to apart from you not no one is foring

That there are plenty of foring pretty pretty bad one but um I mean I agree that amongst the economists um not many of them see something bad but there are there are plenty of of commentators who who do see pretty bleak I mean fact is just but the fact is I

Think the main thing is just to reiterate is we just over the last 10 years banks have not crept credit they haven’t sort of chased riskier lending as a way to get growth because the mortgage regulations introduced in 2015 have disincentivized that and made it much harder so the bank England

Introduced these rules because it was really worried we’d have a house price boom and bust fueled by super cheap money and of course people were borrowing at one or two% mortgage rate but everyone had to prove to their bank they could afford six or seven in the

First place and now anyone buying today has got approved to their bank they could afford eight or nine% even though they’re paying four and a half so it’s not it’s not a savior for everything but it again a few years ago I did a presentation worked out if we didn’t had

Those mortgage regulations house prices in London would have been 30% higher this about three years ago and absolutely house prices would have been probably seeing double digit price Falls but I think again it’s sort of tick of the box of the bank of England who’ve sort of potentially um smoothed out the

Cycle and made it less boom and bust but that’s not to say that you know we’re probably I think you know we’re not going to see a lot of house price growth either basically well I I I’m I’m somewhat heartened by what you point out about that there are far fewer very high

Loan to value mortgages being given than there were in the last cycle that that genuinely is good news and and and does mean there’ll be fewer people who get affected by it um I I know that we’ve discussed this before each different index has its own method of calculating its average price

It’s this one number that you come up with and I just I know someone asked a question I’m going to put it to you now I might get the their wording wrong but I have on this channel done a very crude explanation to show that you can have

House prices falling when the average transaction value Rises and we do have evidence in the Bank of England that transaction volumes at lower values are significantly lower therefore the average transaction value could be moving up now it’s not a raw average I realize that it’s quite a complex

Calculation but you know you talk to people who are trying to sell their houses out there and there are very few going oh yeah I only had to lose one or two percent I think it’s look I think look I’ve built a house price index and uh

I’ve yeah having sort of overseen and worked with colleagues to build a house price index it’s it’s tough because effectively there’s there’s 20 million privately owned homes out there one million of them transact a year and you’re so you’re trying to sort of infer from the 1 million yeah you know the

Value of the 20 million and it and as we know there’s massive differences across the country and how markets work and I’m sure you’ve covered it you know different indic you know and then we’ve got mortgage only indices we’ve got indices with cash yeah so it’s I think

These UK averages are are fine for macroeconomists to get a general sense of our prices rising in double digits one one% or minus one or two but what people really care about is what’s actually the value of my home if and I think coming back to your point about do

Agents over value or whatever I think the question I don’t think any consumer dare ask when they get an agent round because it’s almost like the the agent comes around they do the pitch they talk to all the comps and then the the of elephant in the room moment is you know

So what’s it worth then and then the agent is going to give an asking price they’re going to give a view of Bas on what they think’s in the market and then a reduction as in a potential reduction to the asking price to a degree sell price and I think every consumer every

Serious seller should ask the agent if I wanted to guarantee a sale 90% % sure that this is going to get an offer and go unold sub to contract to within 90 days what’s the price I should put it on at and I think that number is a number

That most homeowners don’t want to hear an answer to basically because and I don’t think people ask the question because and obviously the barriers to entry to listing your home are really low and so um you know but if you’re really serious about moving you have to

Set your asking price you know and you got to be have an honest conversation with your estate agents and I’m not sure how many consumers really have that honest conversation basically and it’s whether they they hope they’re G they might get X because they’ve seen

A house at y down the road and unlocks that move and so um I think just you know if you that’s what I always say if you’re serious about moving you’ve got to speak to an agent and ask them you know what what’s the price to really get

This the sale away in in X days or weeks yeah yeah I agree I agree with that I mean I I’ve always said that you know when you ask an estate agent how much is my home worth whatever their answer is it’s a yes because until they get

Competing funded buyers you won’t know what the market is going to pay for your home and that that’s the question everyone should ask their agent is what will you do that other agents don’t that will get me competing buyers for my home yeah then then then we’ll find out what

It’s worth um but of course you know especially uninitiated first-time sellers often they don’t know what to ask which is one of the reasons I’m doing this um I had a question uh about are you happy to take a question about the the uh the zupa valuation my home

Valuation because one someone put a question in here um let me just uh let me find it um sorry sorry sorry I can’t find it now um basically he said he had he’s got two properties and he’s had them in zuper and been tracking the valley for quite a long

Time and in the last year one of them’s gone up about 30% and one of them’s gone down about about 30% and he actually he privately sent me through um the the actual screenshots from his my zuper thing which I can’t got the exact address in there so I I double checked

That this was actually genuine and he has given me the exact zuper screenshots of it and he’s just he says I’m feeling a bit and what his worry was was that the agents are adjusting what they’re recommending because of the zup valuation and he said but if one is

Up and one is down is it because they know what’s happened specifically to my property or what might cause that to happen it’ be good to see the the real examples we want to send them through I think yeah like an AVM evaluation model is is no different to a surveyor it’s it

Takes the subject property and look for for not every single property we have full attribute coverage basically so you take a property we know what property type it is we need to get the attributes if we don’t get the attributes that has an imp impact on the ability to Value but

That’s reflected in the confidence level so again it’s really important when you look at your zuper valuations or the the price estimates we produce it will say whether it’s high confidence medium or low confidence that’s one of them because I haven’t put the address in there so that’s that’s one say high

Confidence that says high confidence hope that’s a good one that’s high one um and that one has yeah that one’s the one that’s gone up and the other one also says high confidence okay but it all depends on much less the other one

Is is um uh yeah say three okay I look I you need to if you send me those through I can have a look at them but it’s look I think the way the AVM works is it says look here’s the property these are the attributes we know about it um these are

The this is the comparable evidence for that property and if there’s enough comparable evidence and it’s the property is homogeneous enough then it will deliver valuation but also say whether it’s high medium or low yeah you know what can happen around the edges I mean I’m just purely speculating here

But where we don’t have the attributes maybe some shared ownership data’s come through at a lower sale price but again it’s it’s you know I’d happily have a look at that um I think you know we we’re we’re updating 30 million valuations every month basically so um

There’s always going to be sort of outliers but I think and we’ve literally just we haven’t published it yet but we’ve just done a big analysis of how those 30 million valuations have changed over the last year and so plus or minus 30 is sounds like a massive outlier so

It’ be good to of understand how those how those vows have shifted but um you know because the edge case is a plus or minus 5% basically last year rather than plus or minus that much but look it’s it’s an estimate and again as we say if

You really want to know what your home is worth speak to an agent uh point and this is I I have a pathological aversion to all avms because I I think that whilst they are effective lead generating tools there are otherwise relatively unhelpful even I mean lot I

Agents say all the time that a seller thinks they’re worth his X because zuper says so well yeah I don’t it’s there might be something in that I think I think there’s there’s there’s a I mean amms are used by Banks but again I think avms are used by banks with lots of

Rules around them for example say lenders might not use an AVM for a mortgage decision on a flat so I think you know there’s there’s a lot around sorry apologies these lights keep going there’s um on that’s better um so you know for example on Flats things like lease holes

There’s all sorts of complications that an AVM might or might not be aware of basically but I mean if you put an AVM on an absolutely super liquid vanilla three bed semi or detached in a very homogeneous Market yeah it’s going to be bang on every day of the week as soon as

You get into different edge cases and again again it’s ultimately you can look at it it’s called an estimate um and look you need to you need to chat to an agent basically to get a sense of what the property is really worth but I think

Um but I think again across the vast majority of properties I think they’re a pretty good initial indication for those people who just want to watch and keep an eye on the market maybe watch other properties it’s kind of interesting it gets people talking about property and valuation but

Again I think um but as you’ve said even if you’ve got a super liquid property it’s probably gonna be quite easy for agents to Value it but as soon as you start putting in a sort of seven bed millhous in the middle of Wales yes where nothing I mean that then the

Uncertainty gets gets much wider basically so um it’s uh it’s it’s almost a continuation of the index debate about the data you’re using and the information you know about the property basically did you see that um you may not have had a CH I know you’ve had a

Busy day I me I been you been on Sky News Today haven’t you you know Sky News earlier yeah so it’s nice you come to the serious places no best to last there was an article um about the Welsh housing market is there a lendal principal um who published Welsh house

Prices uh uh are well down I think 6% down and in mura tidf they’re down 20% during the calendar year of 2023 and it reminded me about the point because the zupa index is for the is the UK right is that the including Scotland Northern Ireland yeah no we the zupa House Index

Is a is a is a what’s called a repeat sales index so we take pairs of sales we take mortgage valuations we take so subject contract but no we we go all the way down to local Authority level and lower basically you include Scotland Northern Ireland yes we do Scotland

Northern Ireland yeah and we’ve got cash in there as well as mortgage value mortgage yeah um no because the the important thing is of course is that both Scotland and Northern Ireland according to the land registry’s most recent figures saw RI year- on-year Rises while both England and Wales saw

Year on year Falls and so go those all cancel them out cancel each other out a bit you know nowhere amongst the four countries is it actually sort of the average of all four of them it’s either above it or below it and and so this one

Number fits all narrative that comes out in the headlines is I think so unhelpful because it’s really important that you know London land regist figures was down six% year on year no I think I mean our index has shown the same I think we we’ve got Scotland Northern Ireland all

The northern regions of England are all slightly positive yeah and then everywhere south of there is price as a falling year on year and then you can go more granular into that I think look it’s again what you’re really relying on here when you’re building indes and going granular is is what’s selling

Representative of everything else and I think this is it is a frustration I say it on the tweets I do I think consumers homeowners get really frustrated with house price indices because they’re not quite sure what are they Shing and they’re ready for macro economists and even the people that built the two

Academics that built the mortgage lender indices said you shouldn’t really look at month for Monon changes it’s the three month rolling change that really matters so again I think if you really want to understand the value of your home you have to really track all the data that’s out there about what’s

Selling I’m sure a lot of consumers got a good idea of what the home is really worth you can track your home on zuper or agent around to give you a view you will also have an idea about how much stuff is just sticking there not dropping its price and not selling I

Mean there’s a lot of that out there at the moment as well isn’t there well I think there’s yeah I mean all measures of the housing market they’re all based on activity where deals are being house price indices are only as good as what’s actually being agreed in the market

Basically and so I think um the proportion of homes that aren’t selling or and we do track this the proportion of homes that are for sale that having their asking price cut is a good indication of effectively where sellers are out of Kilt where buyers are I mean

Over the whole of last year that number was quite a lot above average and then it got worse towards the second half of the year it’s it’s jumped again but it’s not as high as it was this time last year so again it’s there’s all these triangulation points of all the data we

Have where we can see we get a sense of our buyers and sellers within touching distance of each other because again we we would have been far more we would have been far more negative if we saw a massive gap between buyers and sellers basically but you’re right there are

Things that aren’t selling and again anecdotally I have friends and colleagues who live in the greater Southeast area and they they make obervations that you know four bed houses that were sort of red hot and on fire over the pandemic are having their asking prices cut and cut and cut but

Then that’s in one part of the market basically and so I think it’s this at the end of the day there’s no point having a UK house price index because it is just GNA average everything out basically and it’s but if you live in a twoed flat in Manchester versus a xed

House in wherever this is why granularity of data and uh and more localized info is what consumers need well this is what it’s what they need is what they want desperately you know I mean people need to be able to you know I don’t think you anyone should be able

To answer any question on house prices unless you say is it a house or flat is a freehold lease hold and what what area what part of what city are you in U because every Market will be different you know if you’re in a if you’re in a

Town now which has a a large employer one of your large employers is John Lewis and they’re going to be closing place down well that Market’s going to get affected adversely and so it is hard but I don’t know if you picked up but I’m working on releasing an Exchange price

Index where we’re going to be inviting movers buyers and sellers as well as agents and conveyances to contribute exchange prices as they happen so we’re going to have a hopefully within you know so in one month we’ll be able to report on the previous month’s exchange

Prices The Benchmark I’m setting as as a sample an acceptable sample size will be to match whatever the land registry’s most recent sample size was and if I can get that many exchanges reported then we’ve got something that subject to errors will be as accurate as the land

Registry but hopefully at least three months more timely and therefore be helpful to everyone that’s trying to figure it out um it’s uh yeah like it’s the main message here is you know don’t get too transfixed on what house price indes are saying just look at the broad Trend and direction of

Travel but uh I guess any by putting your house on the market or chatting to an agent and asking that all important question of what would what would you put this house on the market for if you really had to sell it if your fee was based on agreeing a so subject contract

What would you put it on at you might not like the art but that’s the question everyone should ask but no one does yeah absolutely absolutely um well Richard thank you very much I’m very grateful to you for your time um have you got anything you’d like to add for any for

Everyone that’s watching or any questions for me no it’s sort of a obviously we had a good uh we had a good sort of exchange about a year ago over a year ago with the Stig as well I mean I think are you uh have you moderated your

Views are you still uh do you think we’re s well overvalued and still set for double digit Rec correction over a period of time I think that for reasons I cannot prove actual house price Falls for people rather than macro figures are this The Falls are quite a lot larger

Than are being reported already number one I mean I I’ve had agents multiple agents say to me privately I don’t know where these prices are coming from from the market is off so much more than that so and that’s agent saying that to me um

I think the economy in 2024 is going to be so much worse than most people expect I’m hearing headlines and also anecdotally locally this guy this guy on Tik Tok a plaster he said I’ve been plaster for 12 years first time in my whole career I’ve

Got no work got no phone calls coming in got no work I’ve got nothing so I don’t know what I’m going to do and he said all of my all my friends are plas well find the same thing so the all these anecdotal and I had London cabie this

Morning commenting on YouTube saying my December was 30% down on income from the previous December Janu is dead it’s so at the front line I don’t know Richard you’re much younger than me probably I I I clearly remember the early 90s and how and how ble was and it feels

Bit like that but Stig who I spoke to this morning said he’s worried we’re actually going look more like the unemployment rises in 1983 which was much much worse so and again he he’s totally impartial about this know he’ll often beat me over the head and say I’m

Being wrong and I’m being dramatic whatever um but but he he’s really fearing that the economy is the jobs the work jobs economy especially is far worse than anyone was expecting or predicting and that’s why that is the basis of my opinion on where house prices are falling and I think I think

That they’re going to we won’t see it reported for a long time late but I think they’re going to be really sharp Falls in 2024 I’ve already had agents talking to me saying some agents going no we’re busy we’re busy we’ve got some stock is priced well we got viewings and

There stuff happening more challenging than usual but there’s some other agents just going lettings is really busy sales is not we’ve got a real problem um no I agree I think it’s uh yeah look I mean there’s and there you can see it there sort of um different sectors are sort of going

Through the reductions in staff and and and changes and again all that adds up and I think unemployment’s definitely ticked up so um we’ll have to see wait and see how it plays out but uh but very good Charlie thank you for getting me on let’s keep in touch I’m very grateful to

You for coming thanks very much and I hope you’ll come back again soon in the meantime thanks guys and thank you everyone for watching thank you I’m sorry we didn’t get more questions there are lots more questions here we could hear for hours of all your questions um

But thanks for watching guys and we’ll see you on the next one byebye