As I am sure you are aware, one the best things about my job as an agent is helping Hounslow landlords with their strategic portfolio management.

Gone are the days of making money by buying any old Hounslow property to rent out or sell on. Nowadays, property investment is both an art and science. The art is your gut reaction to a property, but with the power of the internet and the way the Hounslow property market has gone in the last 11 years…..

With the average 5-year fixed rate mortgage at 1.98% (down from 3.47% in 2014) and 2-year fixed rate at 1.47% (down from 2.37% in 2014), mortgage interest rates offered by lenders are at an all-time low (even with the slight increase on the Bank of England base rate a few months ago). Added to this, there has been a low unemployment rate of 6.1% in Hounslow, which has contributed to maintain a decent level demand for property in Hounslow in 2017 (interestingly – an impressive 420 Hounslow properties were sold in last 12 months), whilst finally, the number of properties for sale in the district has remained limited, thus providing support for Hounslow house prices, meaning …

Talk to many Hounslow 20 something’s, where home ownership has looked but a vague dream, many of them have been vexatious towards the Baby Boomer generation and their pushover ‘easy go lucky’ walk through life; jealous of their free university education with grants, their eye watering property windfalls, their golden final salary pensions and their free bus passes.

Well the fallout from the recent Budget is still continuing.  I was chatting to a couple of movers and shakers from the Hounslow area the other day, when one said, “There isn’t enough land to build all these 300,000 houses Philip Hammond wants to build each year”.

Now we have had the autumn budget, Theresa May and Philip Hammond have set out their stall with housing as their key focus. I was glad to see the Government introducing a variety of changes to improve housing, including more funding for the supply side and an injection of urgency into the planning system.