The covid storm has upended many investors’ real estate plans for 2020 and 2021, but amidst the storm, a new Real Estate Trends has risen- one that is unexpected and surprising to many.
Before 2020, the general Real Estate Trends among many commercial and residential investors was capitalization of city life and the strong gravitational pull that big city like London has over young professionals and student population.
This glamourization involves luring young dreamers with fast-paced city life and, the opportunities that it offers, and then slapping them with the exorbitant amount of prices over regular items.
Rise of new Real Estate Trends after covid
But along with covid, came a multitude of restrictions on travel, safety and, health. And, as people began working at home, a real estate trend emerged through all of 2020 and persisting 2021 from our collective realization.
With the mainstream acceptance of work from home, we saw a common desire for more space among people, not just for office space but, extended gardens, a garage for parking space, balconies, etc.
We can see this real estate trend continue as a lot of people have realized the importance of living amidst nature and maintaining a work-life balance that they previously might not have had.
We can expect the work from home structure to stay even after the lockdown ends as some companies plan to implement a hybrid workspace, utilizing the needs of their workers to build an employee-friendly work environment.
But many offices being shut down in prime locations has led investors to sell off office spaces as a means to cut costs and to generate funds for the furlough scheme.
Landlords of those spaces are looking to repurpose those spaces into residential flats that meet the renewed demands of the people. Social distancing has also seen a rise of people staying at service accomodation instead of hotels.
However, those in major cities who already have flats that don’t have these amenities are facing difficulties in getting occupancies, being on the market for much longer than those properties that do.
Surprisingly, with the real estate market slowly collapsing in the city, people are flocking over to the Midlands, to find order in nature amongst the covid chaos, advertently finding it easy to buy preferred properties at a reasonable price.
Cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Cambridge have only seen an upward curve in demand but with an insufficient supply, the prices of properties in those cities have skyrocketed.
Government schemes like Stamp Duty Land Tax Holiday have propelled the market, but once that holiday comes to a close, we can anticipate a slump in prices again but not by much.
Cities like London will need to work harder than others to have investors interested again as people are seeing the importance of expansion of businesses to cities like Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Hull.
With expansions of second cities, we can expect a two-speed market with the growth of London at a slower rate than those of others, giving people from those areas more economic growth and infrastructural development.
While these predictions are in line with the market observation during 2020, the rescinding of many government schemes can topple the current demand of people and might even see investors find their confidence in London reinstated with a quick bounce back than the rest.
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