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It’s getting darker, isn’t it? Literally and figuratively. “There’s a tough winter market ahead” one agent said to me, referring to the dwindling demand and spiking supply he’s seeing.

Welcome to this week’s 5 Fact Friday newsletter, your weekly briefing on the most important things affecting the housing market in the last 7 days.

At the bottom is a video I recorded for you today, only for newsletter recipients.

Also, if you’re moving, you can join the “Movers Live Q&A Club” if you want direct access to me for help with your move, by private message, twice monthly live video conference (unrecorded) and discounted private live 1-1 video calls. The next live video conference is this coming Wednesday at 9.30pm for members only.

This week’s Wednesday workshop - How the Renters Rights Bill affects things

In this week’s live video Weekly Workshop on Wednesday, lawyer-turned-landlord Suzanne Smith joined as the specialist guest to talk about how the Renters Rights Bill is likely to help buyers more than renters, and Stig showed up at the end for a brief chat on the market.

Next week’s workshop on Wednesday at 8pm: Live conveyancing Q&A

Next week’s weekly workshop will be a conveyancing special live Q&A with the boss of Thomas Legal, an award winning conveyancing firm, and my hand picked partners. If you have ANY conveyancing questions, questions sent in advance get priority. You can reply to this email, or send them by private message on X or Instagram. Video and audio questions always prioritised!

The Charlie and Stig Show - whoopsie?

We also did the experimental first episode of the new “Charlie and Stig” show where much wine and ‘apple juice’ (not really) was consumed.

We need to monetise this content (because neither Alex’s wine nor time is free!). Having started by asking for a subscription, the large turnout we had for the first show (over 2,000 of you in the first 24 hours) have given a lot of feedback saying that either it needs to be a lower amount, or it should be based on the “Super Chat” concept, where people can chime in with Super Chat questions on demand. We’re going to be discussing that and seeing if we can find the balance.

But enough of my guff! On with the week’s news!

This week’s top 5 housing market headlines:

• Wage growth lags cost of living, but still beating house prices

• 1m rental homes ‘to be lost’ if CGT hikes in budget

• The cost of owning and occupying homes climbs at fastest rate in 34 yrs

• Budget slams brakes on housing market activity

• Big lenders hike mortgage rates

• Bonus fact: Payroll and job vacancy numbers fall

Fact 1: Affordability continues improving, gradually

September’s slowing wage growth figures showed continued but weakening growth at 3.8% total, although still just enough to be improving overall affordability for most buyers as a group. Individually, perhaps not.

But all improvements in affordability for home buyers is welcome. Recent rises in mortgage rates will offset this good news though.

Fact 2: 20% of rental homes ‘to be lost’ if Capital Gains Tax rises come in - Knight Frank and Capital Economics

No, a home doesn’t disappear when a landlord sells it. But unless they sell it to another landlord, it does decrease the rental supply, which in turn pushes prices up.

It remains to be seen if CGT increases are applied to rental properties and second homes (one report in the Guardian says this won’t happen) but if it does, and it triggers yet more landlords to offload properties than the already-record high number now, it will push prices down further for first time buyers.

Good news for buyers, bad news for tenants losing their homes.

Fact 3: “Inflation is not below 2%”. Owner Occupier Housing costs inflation creeps up to 7.2%

This excellent video from Damien Talks Money explains in easy to understand terms why we are feeling much higher inflation than the official figures show.

Inflation makes us poorer. It eats the value of our savings, and it increases our costs of living. The only good thing about it is when wage inflation reduces the value of mortgage debts and payments.

But as Owner occupier housing costs accelerate and continue to rise much faster than house prices, it means that the costs of living, in a home, are increasing in relation to the value of our homes. Meaning people can afford less and less to spend on buying a home.

Fact 4: Budget wait-and-see puts housing market activity into slow-motion, survey shows.

There’s never any official data for what’s happening at the coal face of the housing market in real time. But, I talk to movers, agents, brokers and conveyancers on an almost daily basis, and they’re all saying the same thing. The looming budget has caused the housing market brakes to be slammed on.

So I did a survey, with over 500 respondents and these are the results. More than 50% of people are on hold or delayed:

Fact 5: Major mortgage lenders raise rates up to 0.3% making buyers extra cautious

But as you can see from the subheading below, while they feel compelled to report the mortgage rate hikes, they immediately try and soften the blow with messaging that basically says “but they’re DEFINITELY going to cut the base rate again so it’s all ok!”

BONUS Fact 6: Payroll numbers fall, job vacancies fall

New: A useful regional house price tool from the ONS

The ONS now has a useful regional house price checker. Just remember it’s 6-12 months behind what’s happening today, but a useful tool for seeing what has been happening in your local market, for the property types that concern you.

A ramble on the housing market, just for newsletter recipients.

A few more happenings from the week gone by:

This week’s most viewed video was actually LAST week’s Weekly Workshop with RICS building surveyor Dan Knight.

This week’s most viewed post on my X timeline. House prices fall -32% in Virginia Water in 1 year (Land Reg):

This uncomfortable truth kicked up a hornets nest on X, with 33,000 views and raging reactions in the posts below.

Most viewed on TikTok in last 7 days: “10 rules of buying a home” 70k views!

@movinghomewithcharlie

I’ll do a “why” for each of these soon. The sequence is important!

Most viewed post on Instagram this week:

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.

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

Charlie