Happy Friday ! Thank you so much for subscribing to my newsletter.

Only one more sleep until the clocks “fall back” an hour, and we get a magical extra hour in bed on Sunday morning!

We had a great Wednesday workshop with a lawyer taking live questions from the audience, followed by a good rant with Housing Stig. If you missed it, catch it here.

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.

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

Aside: If you, or someone you know, works in the property market and is looking for a new, self employed, work from home, long term career opportunity with the possibility of a house at the end of it, I’m putting together the first team of regional partners for BestAgent and holding initial, informal meet-ups in Exeter and London on Tuesday and Wednesday, plus a third one in Leeds the week after. The details are on a LinkedIn post here.

This week’s top 5 housing market facts:

1. Rayner rustles up £1bn for social house building. We like that.

2. Bigwigs tell government Landlords actually are important to housing

3. Q3 Completions were down a whopping 42% on 2019

4. Everyone ignores the October Rightmove House Price Index

5. The government has ‘accepted’ the CMA’s housebuilding recommendations

6. Bonus Fact: The budget looms. The sense of economic and social gloom is palpable.

Single sentence summary.

Fact 1: Rayner clinches £1bn more to build social housing.

Whisper it: The message might be getting through, that building social homes is the only permanent answer to the housing crisis. It’s a drop in the ocean of what’s needed, which is more like £50bn, but it’s a promising start and a step in the right direction.

Fact 2: Glimmer of hope that Renters Rights Bill car crash may be averted if government listens to ‘leading figures’ saying Landlords are important after all.

In a rare example of logical thinking on the matter, some influential figures have pointed out what is obvious to anyone not cross-eyed with landlord loathing, that landlords are in fact an unavoidable requirement for a tenant, and thus it may not be the cleverest idea to chase them all away, leaving tenants being made homeless in record numbers.

Fact 3: Q3 completions surprisingly low at 42% down on 2019.

The housing market is in a weird state of flux. Incredibly busy in some areas, (conveyancers rushed off their feet with people trying to get sales exchanged before the budget) while at the same time, a lot of movers dragging their feet and slowing things down to wait until after the budget.

House prices are falling much faster than reported at the higher end of the market, and mortgage rates ticking back up is curbing buyers enthusiasm as they ‘wait for the rate’ to drop. That may not happen as is widely expected. Just today a Bank of England MPC rate setter warned that services inflation is still running too hot.

Fact 4: Rightmove’s October Price Index gets almost zero press coverage. Says usual autumn price bump absent.

But the most interesting thing about it is actually the fact that Rightmove’s annual growth figures are the lowest of all the indices. Asking prices have flatlined, and that’s excluding price reductions, so in fact asking prices across the board, not just newly listed, will be negative on average.

To me this is an early indicator that prices are weakening faster than usual in most sectors of the market. This won’t show up in actual figures until well into 2025 as transactions are taking so long to go through.

Fact 5: Government accepts Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on housebuilding.

This looks like a good thing. New stronger standards may be enforced on builders, with stronger rights for movers who buy poor quality homes. When and how it will materialise remains to be seen, don’t expect any major improvements in housebuilding quality just yet.

It can’t be a bad thing, and it may just turn out to be an improvement. Let’s hope so.

BONUS Fact: Barratt & Redrow homes merger sees massive cuts.

2 years ago I sensed the housing markets ‘bull run’ was over. I was mostly mocked. It’s been a rough market since then, prices at the top of the market down over 25% in some places, not reflected in national averages.

I think the next two years will make the last two look like a picnic.

I think 2025 will be something of a bloodbath for the housing market. I hope not.

So, not so much a fact, as a gut feel, but important to point it out.

A few more happenings from the week gone by:

The next Charlie and Stig show will be the evening after the Budget. Should be interesting. Alex and I are both expecting the unexpected, not in a good way.

The most viewed video on YouTube this week: Don’t become a landlord by mistake!

This week’s most viewed post on my X timeline. The economic signals are still not good:

My most viewed video of ALL TIME on TikTok 1.4 million views: The day of the 2022 Truss mini-budget meltdown, just before it happened!

@movinghomewithcharlie

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/house-sales-plunge-mortgages-set-expensive-30-years/ #mortgage #budget #property #minibudget

Newsletter-only unedited ramble video: I’m worried.

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