A weakening housing market (yes I know that goes against what everyone else is saying, welcome to my life!), rising mortgage rates, mortgage products withdrawn and now Rachel Reeves threatens 39% Capital Gains Tax. It’s not looking pretty for transactions or prices.

Hi and happy Friday everyone! Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. At the bottom is my first newsletter-only video, recorded exclusively for subscribers to the newsletter.

On Wednesday evening, we held the first new style, private “Movers Live Q&A Video Conference” for members of the Private Movers Q&A Club. It was fascinating to meet the member movers in private on video but it was a stark reminder of the harsh reality facing a lot of people who are trying to buy or move, but feel very nervous about doing so.

If you want to join the club, it’s £15 per month, and we do a live private video conference on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month. It also means you can message me privately with your moving questions and get a guaranteed response.

The question burning a hole in my head this week:

The people who claim to care the most about tenants rights and security, seem to have superhuman powers when it comes to ignoring the official government data that says the most common cause of new homelessness was “due to the landlord wishing to sell or re-let the property at 68%”. How can they both ‘care’ and continue to pursue the policies causing record homelessness, at the same time? It’s either because virtue signalling is more important than helping people, or they simply don’t care about innocent tenants being forced into homelessness.

Remember: If you’ve recently rented, bought or sold a home, please report your price to my Public House Price Index.

This week saw the second episode of the new ‘weekly workshop’ show, every Wednesday at 8pm, so you all know when you can definitely catch a livestream every week.

In this week’s episode I had 3 guests, Lewis Shaw talking mortgages, again, agent Perry Power with advice for a seller who wanted to know how to speed things up, and this week Housing Stig was live, in the ‘house’. (Sorry.)

This week’s top 5 housing market facts:

• Supply of £5m+ homes for sale in London is up 27% on last year

• Renters Rights Bill closer to becoming law as it passes second reading

• Mortgage rates begin to tick back up. Where do they go from here?

• Bank of England: Q2 Mortgage arrears up 32% on ‘23.

• RICS September Survey shows supply rising, activity holding steady

Fact 1: £5m+ sellers flooding (relatively) the market

Bloomberg reported on data released by London property data company LonRes that stock of these high end homes ‘continues to rise’ as sellers worry about forthcoming tax hikes. The millionaires stampede for the exit.

The relevance to the rest of the market is that this supply will have a downward cascade effect on prices, slowly at first, but it will accelerate. That’s a significant uplift in supply at that level.

Fact 2: Labour’s Renters Rights Bill one step closer

This well-intentioned bill (who doesn’t want better protections and security for good tenants?) came a step closer to becoming law. A valiant effort by Kemi Badenoch in The Telegraph to point out (correctly) that it will do more harm than good for tenants and is a disaster for young people.

What I wish she had said, in parliament during the debate, was that the Government’s own data now confirms that landlord’s selling up is the primary cause (68%) of new homelessness. Indeed it’s reached a record high, with households in temporary accommodation rising 12% in one year. That’s over 12,000 newly homeless households. An avoidable tragedy.

It's now clear that nothing and no one can stop this bill. I weep for the rising number of innocent tenants having their lives derailed by this misguided legislation.

You can read a great update on the details of the debate from one of my channel guests, Suzanne Smith, ex-lawyer and independent landlord, below.

Fact 3: Mortgage rates start to rise on back of gilt yields.

Lenders borrow their money from the Swaps market. The cost of this borrowing is closely linked to UK Gilt yields, which have started moving back up.

As my mortgage broking partner Lewis Shaw said on Wednesday night’s livestream, for people already in the process of buying who haven’t yet got their mortgage offer secured, he recommends “not delaying”. I share his view! Don’t delay!

Subject to unexpected budget announcements, I fear that the gradual uptick in mortgage rates is going to choke off the delicate rise in buyer confidence and send buyers scurrying for safety again, leaving sellers with fewer offers.

Fact 4: Bank of England says Q2 mortgage arrears were 32% up on last year.

Albeit from a relatively low base, this is still a significant increase in mortgage arrears, pointing to a weakening market, if the increase continues.

You can read the full Bank of England statement here.

Fact 5: RICS September Survey misrepresented by media (as usual) as reporting “house prices rising”. It doesn’t show that.

The monthly RICS market survey is admittedly a slightly confusing representation for the uninitiated. There is no actual price measurement. Respondent surveyors are asked if they think prices are going up or down. Nothing more scientific than that.

It's conducted mid September so is a month behind by publication date.

By contrast, the image below is from the BestAgent All Homes Index, the whole of market, asking price index, which separates Unsold listings from ones showing as “Sale Agreed”.

It shows that the number of homes listed as ‘Sale Agreed’ have dropped 5%, while the number of homes For Sale has jumped over 8%. Dropping demand, rising supply.

This is the biggest signal I have seen of a weakening market for some time, and it’s data from 5 October, so more recent. It’s not definitive, but it’s a factor.

Bonus Fact: Natural (excluding migration) population decline has begun.

For the first time, deaths exceeded births. It’s my view that house prices, more specifically how hard it is to afford a family home, is one of the factors driving birth rates down. More and more people simply can’t afford to have a family.

A few more happenings from the week gone by:

I ran a poll this week to see what kind of Landlord people would choose if they were a struggling tenant, given the choice. It surprised me that Council Landlord was the most popular choice, but I was relieved that a small minority think that Corporate landlords are a good thing.

This week’s most viewed video on YouTube: “Landlord Stampede”

https://youtube.com/live/YVMflj8BP8g

This week’s most viewed post on my X timeline.

Most viewed video on TikTok: 170,000 views!

Scam is a strong word, but when a charity tricks people into donating by pretending it helps the homeless, when in fact it’s a well funded lobbying and fundraising operation who doesn’t provie any shelter or help for the homeless, but provide very expensive advice to people to help prevent homelessness, it makes a lot of people very cross.

It makes me cross because it is their lobbying that has led to the record levels of homelessness we’re seeing.

@movinghomewithcharlie

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics https://england.shelter.org.uk/what_we_do/how_we_spend_your_money

And finally: an exclusive video recorded just for readers of this newsletter.

My personal thoughts on the housing market this week, not available anywhere else.

That’s all for this week!

Thank you so much for subscribing. Please do give me any feedback you have by replying to this email.

I hope

Have a great weekend, lots of love and luck to you all.

Charlie