If you want to know what’s really happening in the property market, the last people to ask are estate agents and housebuilders. Just as a fund manager can never tell you the stock market is going to crash, any deviation from the ‘there’s still plenty of room for growth and we need to build several zillion houses, there’s such a shortage’ story could produce a self-fulfilling prophesy. Anecdotal evidence is often a better indicator of the way things are going. Like how that ‘For Sale’ board’s been up at the end of the road? And how many builders have reclassified themselves as ‘property developers’.
“John Lewis foray into BTR could result in losses of £57m”
I did predict a while ago that Waitrose Homes rather than Waitrose Home Deliveries could be the future. John Lewis were probably the most benign big business to decide to go into the housing rental market, a move which could swing things away from the unpredictability of the mass of private landlords who dominate the sector.
