Mike4 wrote:richfool wrote:More concern about commercial property and REIT values.
£230billion commercial property crash: Treasury watchdog sounds the alarm as millions work from home.
The value of commercial buildings will fall by nearly 14% this year, the OBR says
Transactions in 2020-21 are also expected to plummet by 23.7%
Commercial property prices look set to plunge as white-collar workers shun the office, the Treasury watchdog has warned.
After employees across the country were sent to work from home in the coronavirus lockdown, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is predicting that the value of offices and other commercial buildings will fall by nearly 14 per cent this year.
The pandemic has also accelerated the decline on the High Street – hitting the value of shops – as families flock online at the expense of brick and mortar outlets.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/ ... alarm.html
Looking on the bright side, a lot of office blocks lend themselves easily to conversion into residential flats.
Kills two birds with one stone. Mops up vacant office accommodation and alleviates the housing shortage.
Not that the housing shortage will ever go away. No matter how cheap you make it, there will always be a stratum of people who can't
quite afford to buy where they think they deserve to live and feel locked out of owning a property for ever. Where HAVE all those "house price crash" zealots gone, by the way? A debate for another board though I guess.
£230billion commercial property crashWhy is that when property prices go up and up and up ad infinitum, beyond inflation or wage inflation, everyone looks the other way, yet the second they dare to come down, it's called a 'crash'? Yes, I know, it goes back decades, so rhetorical question.
I think that everyone outside London knows that there is no housing shortage; rather a shortage of affordable housing. Certainly, affordable apartments would be welcome, though I think the British public have been brainwashed into thinking of apartments as too continental. They must have a house, a garden, a crazy council tax bill and a ridiculous soul-sucking mortgage that lasts for 30 years. Only then will they have learned the ways of the force and become real men.
Steve