Market Update - April 2026

0:00Have you ever wondered what successful property investors actually do? Well, after more than a decade of helping thousands upon thousands of people invest, we found that actually it's really simple. The investors who do the best are just following some basic principles and sticking by them. So we put together an entire guide that sums up these principles, an investment philosophy, if you like. And you can find that for free at propertyhub.net forward slash strategy.

0:32hey everyone it's robby here with rob d and you are listening to the property podcast it's market update it's our most listened to show each and every month because you want to know what is happening in the market and there is a lot happening in the market at the moment the world's a bit uncertain but we're going to give you all the detail of what's happening so you feel a bit more secure.

0:58Welcome to the Property Podcast. Thank you for joining us. In case you don't know, we run a business that buys more than£100 million worth of property every year for our clients. You can find out about that at propertyhub.net slash invest. And at times like this, when everything is a bit uncertain, it's never more critical as an investor to know what's going on. So let's bring you up to speed right now. So let's start like we always do with house prices and nationwide have reported house prices up by nearly one whole percent in the month of March, 0.9 to be exact. And that means the average price in the UK now is£277 ,186.

1:31There's the exact number for those who like the detail. That's another strong month and that is what we were seeing, those green shoots that we talked about in the last few weeks. That was, of course until the iran war and for the last few weeks there's been a bit more uncertainty so we'll have to see whether those green shoots have been trodden on or it's just a temporary blip in the market but either way as we've talked about in an episode recently it's allowed deals to be done again those green shoots were allowing sellers to become a bit more confident and maybe not accept deals they might have towards the back end of last year but with the iran war there's a temporary blip at least but we'll have to wait for april's and possibly even may's numbers to see what impact that's had but regardless the first quarter of the year it's been a strong one for property strong when you consider what we've had recently rob of course it's uh nowhere near a boom but it was some healthy growth at least i was going to say 0.9 in march 0.3 in february this is boom territory by recent standards but actually no the true boom is happening in northern ireland So when you look at the regional picture, no surprise, the outer southeast is the weakest region.

2:39That's falling by 0.7%. Northern Ireland, though, growing at a mere 9.5%. What is going on there? Absolutely mad. But a consequence of those green shoots, which may or may not have been trampled, we'll have to wait and see, is that sellers have been coming to market. When the market is really grim, people just hold off transacting. But because things have been looking relatively brighter, properties have been listed again. and according to Rightmove, supply is at an 11-year high. Yes, there are more properties on the market today than there have been in the last 11 years. And that means if you're trying to get a deal done, you are spoilt for choice at the moment, especially because the time to find a buyer is the longest for this time of year since 2013.

3:20So Rob, there are lots of sellers out there and not so many buyers. Yeah, there's a weird dynamic right now because of those green shoots, it encouraged the sellers onto the market, like you say, Rob. But sentiment in the market has changed at least for the time being and that's creating a window. So for those who are active right now, fill your boots. Let's move on to rentals now and a staggering number from an article in the intermediary.co.uk might be a first for their appearance on the podcast and this article details fleet mortgages have reported that rental yields have increased across every region in England and Wales on an annual basis in Q1 of this year.

3:57It says now the average yield, and this will be gross yield, is 8.1 nationally, up 0.7 % year on year. That going through 8 % is huge. It's such a strong return at the moment. It's crazy. And that's an average, remember, in the Northeast, it's approaching 10 at 9.8. So you have multiple regions at the moment in the North and Midlands now exceeding that 8 % threshold. Now, you do have to remember, that won't be the prime stock in those areas so those areas are big big areas that's going to push up by the cheapest areas of those regions and in the northeast for example you can get some very very cheap areas so it's that's what's driving that yield up but regardless that's how it's always been and this has to be a record high at blasting through eight percent and this is something i say regularly on the market update but that's why i love that we do this show every month is that when you get into the detail and you hear about data like that, because let's face it, not many people are browsing through the intermediary website day in, day out, but you'll miss stories like that.

5:05But with yields so strong right now, for investors or future investors, they don't even really need to believe in capital growth in the future to get a good return from property now. Now, I'd strongly advocate that you invest for capital growth and you leverage to take full advantage of it and buying areas give you the best chance of achieving that. But regardless of all that, the yields are just attractive. It's hard to get those types of returns anywhere. And yes, they are gross yields, but let's be realistic. You're getting less and less in the banks now. Your saving account isn't paying out what it was one, two years ago because interest rates have been cut.

5:40So at some point, if this trend continues, people will just start to look at property just for the rental return and see capital growth as a bonus. So you've got this wonderful window at the moment where it's absolutely a buyer's market, but you're getting great returns as well. Yep. And those people who are being drawn in are overwhelmingly doing so in a limited company. It's another stat from the same piece of research. 78 % of applications in a limited company. That's the highest figure I've seen now. That's going to be skewed slightly by the type of lender, but still absolutely massive. And it gives you an impression of the kind of people who are getting in versus getting out as we've spoken about many times more good news on rents from a landlord's point of view at least is that rents for newly let properties are up so of course a couple of years ago we had that mega rental boom rents were going crazy then things settled down we had a pattern for a while where landlords were increasing rents within tenancies but rents for had kind of plateaued now they're back on the up again the average rent is up to 1368 pounds again madness i could remember and that was 700 and something it wasn't that long ago and london rents are back up as well up one percent over the last month after 13 consecutive months of falls so i think what we're seeing there is the supply squeeze in action the complete opposite pattern of what we're seeing in the sales market and sales market absolutely loads of stock out there the rental market quite the opposite again though the regional picture is incredible so ons figures show that rents are up 3.5 % over the last year but London is the lowest 1.1 % the North East 8 % we've shared similar data before but it is worth emphasising again because that is absolutely nuts a real post-covid rental story comes from this story in Property Investor Eye where the headline reads surging room rents leave affordability at breaking point and it goes on to detail that room rents in key cities, Belfast, Newcastle, Cardiff, have all increased around the 50 % mark over the last five years.

7:35And it's not just those cities, Glasgow 44%, Manchester 43%, Edinburgh 41%, the list goes on, Derby coming in at 7th, Liverpool 8th, Southampton 9th. And that's probably the position Liverpool will finish in the league this year as well. So what does this tell us? Well actually, when we look at the one-year change, it's not much of a spectacular headline. In fact, Newcastle is at number two room prices have actually fallen in the last 12 months by 1.6%. The headline is slightly misleading because rents seem to be on a per room basis on the way down but what it does show us is that after Covid everyone said no one's going to live in cities and if they do they want their own space and for a small amount of time that was true but it turns out people do want to live in cities and not everybody can afford or wants to rent their own place but what we can clearly see is that trend reversed and has come back up over the last five years not that much movement in the last 12 months but you can see the longer term trend of the five years is the return of people to city centers i think that's really really interesting data not surprising but not many people call this and rob i do remember i still want to give you credit for it you did call this you said people would return to the city centers it seems like a normal thing now but when you are a lone voice and being completely contrarian to what everyone else is saying you can be scoffed at but five years on the data is loving you my friend well when you get something right keep on repeating it that's what i say i'm gonna take that one because i've been rung about plenty in the past but i mentioned earlier about the landlords who were getting in versus getting out and let's dig into that a bit more in this next section because there are a few stories around at the moment on this theme so who are landlords where is the sector growing where is the sector shrinking.

9:19So according to a survey from Property 118, landlords are older, more mature, to put it nicely. 77 % of landlords age 56 plus. Now that's going to be skewed by the site that is doing the research. If we did the same piece of research because our audience is different, it would come in lower. But nevertheless, this is one data point in many. We've seen this pattern where a lot of the landlords who are getting out are not necessarily just doing so because of rental reform. That's the thing that's blamed. And sure, it doesn't help, but a good number of them would be getting to that point anyway. So that's who landlords are.

9:50Where is the sector growing versus shrinking? Well, where it's shrinking is smaller landlords. So we've got data from the Deposit Protection Service. And this is going to be good data because it's based on deposit records. So they know from their database how many properties each landlord has. This isn't just going and surveying people. And they found that landlords with just one or two properties fell from 57 % to 50 % over the last year. And landlords with 11 properties or more rose from 5 % to 8%. So those don't sound like big moves, but I would argue that within a year, those are pretty big moves.

10:22And we're near the start of what I believe is going to be a long term trend, especially, Rob, when you put it together with that fleet mortgages data about how 78 % of applications are from limited companies. You're getting a real picture of where the rental market is going. It seems, for me, the data suggests that it's the people who are taking it serious, all the ones making all the moves right now, those who are fully committed to property investment as a strategy and for those who have just dabbled it's a side project a side quest if you like they are moving out of the market and this is something that we've said for a long time now that you can't really dabble in property investment in the UK anymore not really anywhere but you can't do it in the UK it's too complex you need to really invest through limited company for the majority of people at least and there's more to it so if you're going to go to the effort of investing in one or two you may as well continue and yes funds will prohibit some people from building those bigger portfolios and people with one or two may be very dedicated to getting to those bigger numbers but you'll get there if you stay dedicated i think the point is years ago 10 years ago plus when we started this podcast lots of people would just buy a property on the side it was just something good to do like you did your stocks you did whatever else and then you had a one or two buy to let's.

11:39You can't really dabble anymore and this data is hard data showing that it's not people dabbling, it's serious professionals. Now what will be really interesting to see in years to come is when we do eventually have a boom in property prices and it's been a long long time since we've had one of those, like a sustained boom, but when we do have a sustained boom and sentiment follows that and everybody gets excited about property again, will we see speculation and people dabbling then i think yes it's just human nature even if it is harder i think people will ignore the consequences and just go in so i think this trend will continue for now but when property recovers and delivers strong numbers which at some point it will because it's just another asset class and they all go through cycles when it does then this data may change again but for now i can see this trend absolutely continuing i think so now let's come on to mortgages and interest rates and this is a trend which we hope will be more short-lived which is the upheaval in the mortgage market because of what's going on in iran and what analysts believe the knock-on effects of this will be for energy prices and therefore inflation and therefore the path of interest rates so the bank of england voted last week to hold interest rates at 3.75 and bank of england fact fans that is the first time since 2021 they've had a unanimous vote previously there were four members believing that rates should be cut they've now switched to a hold because of what's going on in Iran.

13:01But because the market is now pricing in a couple of increases this year rather than cuts, and because the situation is changing from day to day, lenders don't really know if they're coming or going. Products having taken off the market to be repriced all over the place, over 1 ,500 products having taken off the market over the last month. Important to emphasize though, Rob, we've said this before, but it's worth repeating because people get the wrong end of the stick about this. This isn't lenders panicking going, oh my god, we don't want to lend against property, everything's going to collapse.

13:25No, this is just repricing because of volatility. So if you're in the process of agreeing, a deal right now yeah it's unfortunate timing and you're gonna have to be speaking to your broker frequently and while we can't predict exactly what's going to happen to rates we can say that things are going to settle down and that's important we talked about this on last week's podcast and if you've not listened to that i strongly recommend you do because it really helps you understand where opportunity lies and uncertainty but right now those mortgage rates are putting people off from moving forward and because there is that follow-up so let's not pretend there isn't but when you have more stock on the market like we've already talked about and you have less people interested in buying that stock the deals are just very very good because you're going against the crowd but you have to remember these mortgages have increased slightly because of uncertainty but even if the war continues that still brings in most cases certainty doesn't sound nice but it's true because we only have to look the ukraine war the same thing happened when that all kicked off but then it became normal again so mortgage rates will settle down whether the walk is in use or not and then people will start to move back in and regain some confidence so it's the brave right now who are taking full advantage of it should be i say you're investing and not taking full advantage of your situation right now then well you're a bit crazy you are in a very strong position if you're an investor right now so make sure you take full advantage of that strength that you have now rob i've noticed in the office a lot of buntings been arriving in boxes um some party balloons and i can now understand why because it's approaching may 1st and that's a big day for you it's a big day no it's not my birthday it's far bigger than that it's the implementation of the renters rights act and because you said something nice about my prediction earlier rob for your benefit i will rattle through this quite quickly but the big news the government has published the renters Rights Act information sheet.

15:21What? Yes, this is the information sheet that you must serve before the end of May unless you want to be fined£7 ,000. That needs to go out to tenants and looking at the wording of it, it'll be of no benefit at all because it's very hard to understand. Unless you're immersed in this stuff, you're still not going to have a clue what's going on. Tenants apparently do not. Two thirds of tenants in London are completely unaware of what's going on according to one piece of research and who can blame them really. But more worryingly, according to another piece of research, 25 % of landlords still have no idea that this is coming up i predict that those are probably the landlords who are not going to be still in the market in a few years time so we're about to give you hub extra but i hope you've enjoyed this week's market update it is our most popular show each and every month we know lots of people from the industry listen not just aspiring or established property investors so if you are one of those people do share with your peers go to the show notes let them also get glued up on what is happening in the property market each and every month.

16:15There's a link there that will help you share this podcast with others because when you share things you feel like a good person. And that's why we do Hub Extra each week because we like to feel like good people and this week we're bringing you another bit of AI. Yes we know we talk about AI a lot on the podcast and not always property specific but we do really think that you should be going all in because there is so much happening in that world right now. But regardless, I want to give you something that you as a hardcore property investor can use. And also lots of people can use this outside of property investment as well.

16:51And what is the tool? Well, it's Claude for Excel. Link in the show notes, of course. But what it allows you to do is work directly within your Excel spreadsheet with Claude. So once you've signed up to Claude, you can then download this extension or this tool and it will connect to your Excel spreadsheets. And you can do pretty much whatever you want within those spreadsheets. Within minutes, I built a cash flow model for property investment just as a test, which included all the stamp duty implications for property investors. It had loads of detail. It was really robust. It would have taken me hours upon hours to create myself.

17:29But from scratch, it just took a little bit of prompting with this tool. And I could watch the Excel spreadsheet come to life in real time as Claude worked on it. It's truly impressive, but it's not just for creating things, it's for improving things. So if you have a detailed spreadsheet, detailed models already, you can enhance them, improve them, check for mistakes. It's fantastic. It is really, really good. And if you pay for Claude already, and I think the basic account is like£20, it's an absolute steal. This is part of it. You can start using it today. It is well worth downloading if you ever dabble within a spreadsheet so do check that one out it's a great tool well that is us done for this week thank you for joining us if you don't want to wait a whole month for your next dose of news then do sign up for our newsletter it's free it's every friday it rounds up everything you need to know you can find that at propertyhub.net slash pulse and we'll see you again back here very soon bye-bye bye-bye