Paul Markovitz

Any hint of positive news in the property market at the moment is inevitable followed by the phrase “despite Brexit”. So it was this week with news that last month UK banks approved the highest number of mortgages since 2017. In this blog, I look at the state of the property and lending market (with …

If the press is to be believed, the Brexit shenanigans have triggered a sluggish property market. What’s more, they say, there is little chance of it improving any time soon. But how true is this? Is there are a risk that over-cautious developers are going to miss out? I was heartened to read this in …

We wouldn’t suggest 2018 has been an easy year for smaller developers but as the new year approaches, we think there are plenty of grounds for positive thinking. In our recent blog about the autumn budget, we suggested that developers should be cautiously optimistic about the steps the government it taking to help them build, …

These are challenging times for small developers and housebuilders. In 1988 there were 12,200 small housebuilders in the UK but this had fallen to just 2,400 by 2014. These are alarming statistics for the industry at a time when the challenge to build enough new homes for the UK population has never been greater. One …

The conventional wisdom is that rocketing house prices have caused the UK’s broken housing market. But a new report claims that the real culprit is the land market and has called on the government to stop landowners raking in huge profits from land speculation. Few people would disagree that the UK housing market needs urgent …

Headline property data indicates that the residential market is going through a bit of a lull at the moment. But developers who look behind the numbers and beyond the capital will find plenty of positives. It would be easy for property developers to feel gloomy about the current residential property market. There has been some …