Market Update - November 2025

0:01Hey everyone, it's Robby here with Robby and you are listening to the market update property podcast. This week we'll be discussing the budget, we'll be discussing a landlord sell-off and reveal who's buying those properties from that sell-off and we'll talk about Rachel Reeves and what she's been up to with her by today.

0:23Welcome to the Property Podcast. Thank you for joining us. In case you don't know, we run a company 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 this is the episode every month where we round up everything that you need to know about what's going on in property so let's get into it let's start like we often do with house prices so annual house prices quite strong in the last month according to nationwide with a monthly rise of 0.3 percent which for a month is pretty good let's face it we talked about this at length last week the sentiment out there at the moment is pretty shocking and hopefully you're all taking advantage of that but the market isn't shocking and actually over the last 12 months it's up by 2.4 percent now rob we haven't organized the party off the back of that level of growth but it's okay it's not a disastrous year it's not a stellar year but it's okay and when you consider the narrative around property it's actually quite surprising because if you just listen to the noise and you weren't able to see the data and then after listening to a year's worth of noise you said okay, what do you think house prices have done in the last 12 months?

1:32I imagine many people would go negative with their predictions, but here we are, 12 months worth of data at 2.4%. Yeah, they're not just okay, Rob. It's broadly stable. Broadly stable, says Rob Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist. You've got to love a bit of broadly stable. I'm going to start saying that more. But yeah, you're right. The numbers are better than the sentiment. Also, as Nationwide goes on to point out, incomes are growing faster than that. So affordability is improving. Rents are growing faster than that. So rental yields are improving. There's a story that hasn't made it in here, but the report from Aldemar that said that yields were higher than they have been since someday a long time ago.

2:10I forget when, but a long time. So yields are strong. So given what we're talking about last week with the potential for deals on offer at the moment, despite the broad stability of the market, it could be a very good entry point right now. Yeah, yields are so important when it comes to future house prices, because when returns get really attractive, which they are at the moment, then people will start to look at the market and go, I can get over that noise because the returns are so good. Even if I don't believe in capital growth, I'll go in just for the returns. By the way, if you missed that news story, we covered that in Property Pulse last week.

2:41And if you haven't subscribed to Property Pulse, you're a bit crazy if you listen to this and haven't done that, go to propertyhub.net forward slash pulse, because that's where we cover different news stories each and every week as well. And it's written by the fair hands of Mr D. But let's move on to the big story in waiting, Rob, the budget. Everyone is very nervous about the budget and understandably so because there's been a lot of noise, which we'll get onto in a minute, with the budget. Now I'm going to say straight from the off, Labour's tactic around budget seems to be that they leak loads and loads and loads of negativity into the market everyone is terrified and then they produce a budget which is not great but nowhere near as bad as everyone expected so i'm hoping as we go through some of the talking points in a moment that these don't come through and it's just a lot of noise and actually what we get is a watered down version of this or just a selection of this because if everything comes through that's been talked about and not just for property across the economy we're all going to be miserable going into Christmas.

3:45So hopefully Labour realise that and they're doing their old tactic of make it look really bad. And when it's just quite bad, everyone's relieved. Yeah, well, we are still, believe it or not, two weeks away. So sick of the budget already. But we are two weeks away and we will be putting out a special podcast the morning after and we'll be putting out a YouTube video the day after with a tax expert as well. So we will be well covered for whatever comes our way. And what will it be? Will it be a mansion tax? Will it be reforming stamp duty? Will it be 8 % extra national insurance on rental income?

4:14Take your pick, Rob. It could be that. It could be so much more. Just like you say, just about everything's been thrown at it. But maybe it won't. Because something else that's happened within the last week is Rachel Reeves gave a speech where she didn't say it, but the language of it seemed to be trying to prepare everyone for the fact that income tax is going to go up. And so this is, of course, one of their manifesto pledges. Basically, we're not going to put up any of the main taxes, so we're going to have to find money in all these other weird places. But now they've realised that actually, the only way to raise the money we need is to break that pledge and put up income tax.

4:46So if they do that, it's possible that some of these other more property-specific and things specific to other industries will drop away. Because what it seemed like they were trying to do is like, crap, how do we raise money without raising any of the big taxes? Let's scramble around for anything we can possibly find. If they do raise one of the big taxes, maybe that necessity goes away or maybe i'm just being too optimistic on behalf of investors i don't know i think the whole income tax point is a bit of a farce anyway because they put income tax up by stealth all the time by freezing the thresholds because we have inflation yeah so wage inflation increases people earn more but they leave income tax thresholds where they were so the income tax receipts they get continue to go because of that now it appears that they need even more money than doing it by stealth so that's really interesting and the fallout from this will be very interesting there's going to be a lot of noise if Labour do deliver this change but it's fascinating that doing it by stealth isn't even enough anymore but when all the media does report that it's going up you know already that it already has just by stealth so income tax will be an obvious one to watch when the budget is announced but another one for us all to keep an eye on is a rumour that seems to have circulated again around national insurance tax on rental income.

6:05Rob, there's been a news story in the last week or so on this. And while income tax will get the headlines, this one won't exactly be welcome either. No, so this has come back round again, it seems. So now the suggestion seems to be 8 % national insurance on rental income up to 50k and then 2 % above that. Will that happen? Who knows? But the important thing to know about it is that that only applies to individuals, not limited companies. So if you've got all your properties in a company, nothing to worry about, even if that does happen. If you don't, well, it's just disadvantaging individuals even further compared to companies.

6:40So definitely would not be good news for what we've been calling legacy landlords. But will it happen? In just two weeks, Rob, we will find out. We will. And hopefully it plays out that it's nowhere near as bad as we all expect it to be, and that we actually feel relieved by some minor tax hikes but do remember that this uncertainty creates opportunity we've talked about how yields are strong capital growth continues and last week we talked in depth about how right now there's a really unique opportunity in the property market where sentiment is so bad that the market is behaving like there's been a market crash but there hasn't been so you're getting market crash discounts if you're able to negotiate well that's what we're able to do at the moment to property of invest but you have a stable market a stable market with lots and lots of negative noise around it but remember it's noise now if people are relieved after the budget and then feel right i'm ready to put my capital back into the market again that opportunity will quickly go away and i know developers are starting to feel a little bit more confident as well they're not suddenly skipping through fields with joy with how the property market is but they're starting to feel a little bit more confident so do take advantage of this what appears to be quite small window to get yourself an incredible deal and that means just being persistent going out putting lots of offers in your one vendor you speak to may not be in that position where they need to sell but if you keep persisting in the short term over the next few weeks you could land yourself an incredible deal which would be helped rob if interest rates had fallen but they haven't they've held firm they have but it was a close run thing so they voted to hold rates at four percent by five to four so only one member of the committee swinging it the rest of them wanted to cut rates to 3.75 so a hold was what was anticipated but i don't think it was anticipated it was going to be quite that close and there is still the chance that we'll end the year on less than four because there is one more rate setting meeting this year in december so how much of an impact would that have on mortgages if it did happen i don't know because fixed rate mortgages are more sensitive to longer term borrowing costs but psychologically i think if we ended the year at 3.75 that'd be playing into what you were just saying rob about a bit more optimism among investors going into next year if we have a not as bad as it could have been budget and an interest rate cut then i think a lot of people will be going into january feeling a lot happier about things and a lot more inclined to take action absolutely with yields strong right now as we've reported and interest rate cuts on the horizon it's starting to make the market look very attractive from a numbers point of view at least but that's not prevented a sell-off from small landlords according to landlord zone but who's snapping up these properties that are coming to the market so the news story goes on to report that because of sentiment and proposed changes small landlords are selling off their portfolios and who's stepping in to take them portfolio landlords the bigger players but it's interesting maybe not surprising but it's interesting that more professional, bigger landlords, investors, if you like, are taking advantage of things and been through this before.

9:45They understand the markets, they understand debt and over noise, and they are taking advantage of this apparent sell-off of smaller landlords. Yeah, I think the sell-off is real among smaller landlords and also among older landlords. And this is often painted as a landlord exodus. But as you've said, the net effect is not necessarily fewer landlords. It's just different landlords. So smaller ones exiting, larger ones coming in, but also older ones exiting, younger ones coming in. I don't think we've talked about this data on the podcast. I don't remember. We definitely included it in Property Pulse, but there was a report from Hamptons that said millennials, so basically bought from 1981 onwards, have made up half of all shareholders in new buy-to-let companies.

10:27So as we know, the majority of new buy-to-let purchases are within companies. It's about 75 % or so. And of those, half of all shareholders are people who are, let's say, early 40s and down. And Rob, I don't think that would surprise us because we hear from these people, we see these people, we serve these people as clients of Property Hub Invest, but you wouldn't know they existed if you listened to the media. You just think like, oh, all landlords are getting out. But no, it's the smaller landlords and the older landlords who are getting out and they've all got very good reasons to go to. But there is still enthusiasm from these different cohorts coming in which is broadly bigger companies and younger people taking it more seriously trying to get to some kind of scale buying within a company structure i mean it's interesting right where it's a not a massive data set but property of invest is having its biggest year in terms of the amount of deals it's done with investors in a year that people would judge as a really poor year for property now the data doesn't say that but the noise does as we keep talking about it just shows what an educated investor can do and what an educated investor understands and it's no surprise that if people listen to the podcast and get over the noise and over the chatter and get to the truth of what's actually playing out on the ground which we like to talk about as well that they've taken full advantage of this but that doesn't really make a great news story and you've quite rightly said rob the sell-off is real it's not fake legacy landlords have good reason to want to get out of the market but what's not also being reported is smart money is taking advantage of it we've seen that within our data but new stories like we just discussed also show that we have to finish on though rob someone very important not behaving correctly when it comes to property and i'm very disappointed to report and i'm sure you've maybe you've already heard but we'll give our view on it that rachel reeves broke a rental licensing law by not obtaining a selective license for her South London property when renting it out, despite supporting such regimes in her own constituency.

12:25So, Rob, that's a bit naughty, isn't it? Ah, it is. But it's a valuable lesson for us all, because what seems to have happened is not that she's a ha-ha-ha, I'll see if I can save my 900 quid and not pay for this stupid license. What happened? Using an agent, the agent said, don't worry, we'll apply for this license for you. And then they didn't. And she, presumably having one or two other things on her mind, didn't follow up and forgot about the whole thing and then it came to light later not a good look but you can understand how it happened but it is a very important reminder that even if you use an agent all things like this all legal requirements all licensing all safety certificates all of that still sits with you it's you as the landlord who gets into trouble if someone doesn't do their job properly so you do have to be careful you do and that's why it's important to take the time to pick the correct letting agent for you one that you can really trust it appears that rachel reeves didn't pick the correct one here in my tone at the beginning hopefully came across as in jest because what i do think is absolutely crazy here is that people try to leverage this for her to lose her job i mean if i had to lose my job for every time i didn't do some admin i'd be permanently unemployed it's i don't know if this is an important thing to do but it was a mistake it It wasn't, like you say, Rob, it wasn't deliberate.

13:38So a lesson for us all, but maybe not one that we should all lose our jobs over if we don't do. But you know what we do want to do, Rob, is put everyone to sleep. And maybe we've achieved that already with this podcast, but hopefully not. Yeah, we're about 20 minutes in, so there's a good chance that we've already achieved our objective. But in case we haven't, for Hub Extra this week, I'm going to share the weird way that I get to sleep. And I've got a whole theory about this. So this is definitely not healthy. This is not good sleep hygiene, but I need to be listening to something to get to sleep.

14:06If it's just me and my thoughts, no, no, no, not good. I need to have something to distract me while I fall asleep. And I found that the sweet spot for something to help me to get to sleep is not something super boring, because then I just ignore it and I'm thinking. Not something super interesting, because then I want to stay awake and listen to it, but something where I'm just interested enough and I'm kind of actively listening and it makes me tired and I fall asleep. So that's my general theory that's been working for me. But something that's been working for me particularly well recently is listening to Professor Brian Cox, former DREAM keyboard player and now astrophysicist.

14:37There's a whole YouTube subgenre, which I didn't know existed, who just edited down compilations of Brian Cox sharing amazing space facts. So now I just stick on an hour-long thing about him telling you amazing things about the scale of the universe and black holes and all the rest of it, and helps me drop straight off. So that is my hub extra for the week. Possibly one of the strangest we've had, but it does it for me. I think I'm still learning things about you, Rob, that maybe I don't want to know but i'm learning more about every week even after all these years i will add to this hub extra something that's useful that when i have a particularly poor night's sleep something i've been trying recently is mega dosing on creatine my algorithm on youtube went wild recently with studies that were released on taking a lot of creatine after a bad night's sleep helped you get your mental sharpness back and i think the amount the sweet spot is 20 grams plus which is quite a lot and you have to have good creatine so it doesn't play with your tummy shall we say but i have creatine that works for me and when i've had a poor night's sleep i take it it may be completely placebo but i find that my mental sharpness comes back not enhanced so i've unlocked some magical level but just normal and just normal when you're tired actually feels great so try it research it i'm not a doctor but there's plenty studies out on this very subject start watching on youtube and then you'll get a similar boring feed to me but i've done it today i had a poor night's sleep last night feel absolutely fine now could be the strong coffee i had before this podcast as well who knows but either way i'm good i've at least tricked myself into thinking it works even if it doesn't i've really enjoyed this conversation but i feel like maybe we shouldn't be broadcasting it.

16:24I don't think we're showing ourselves in our best light, but it's too late now. It's done. It's out there. So that is Hub Extra. And that is everything you need to know about what's going on in property news at the moment. Obviously, the budget is looming. So if you want to know what's going on there, make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel because the very following day, we'll be grilling a tax expert on everything that's happened. And for all the news as it happens, make sure you are subscribed to our completely free Property Pulse weekly newsletter where we round up the week's news for you.

16:50You can sign up for that at propertyhub.net slash pulse. We're off to megalose some creatine and learn about black holes, but we will see you back here next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.