Blog Post

Housing forecasts for 2017

Melanie Bien • 3 January 2017

Seven property experts give their views as to what will happen with the property market in 2017

There is much speculation flying about as to what 2017 has in store for the housing market. Zoopla asked Melanie for her opinion on the market as an independent commentator:

Melanie Bien, property expert and commentator
House prices: up 2%
Rents: up 2%

“The housing market is likely to be largely flat. All the indicators suggest that Brexit negotiations will drag on which will have an impact on people’s confidence. The shortage of properties for sale will support prices to an extent but we are a long way off the double-digit house price growth seen in the past.

“With people on the whole choosing not to move, rental property is likely to continue to be in strong demand. With changes to mortgage interest tax relief coming in from April, putting a squeeze on landlords’ profits, and letting agents forced at some point to stop charging tenants fees, it looks as though the only way for rents is upwards.”

by Melanie Bien 03 Feb, 2020
Houso, a revolutionary new property app which allows vendors to gain pre-market exposure for their home in order to gauge interest before committing to selling for free, has hired property PR agency Bien Media to raise its profile in the press. Ben Johnston, founder and director of Houso, says: ‘Anyone who’s experienced the torturous home-buying and selling process knows the current system is simply not working. With so little stock for sale, and far more demand than supply, vendors won’t seriously entertain an offer from a buyer unless the buyer’s own home is under offer. But if you haven’t found a dream home to buy, why risk marketing your own property? If you receive an offer, the pressure is on to find your next home and you may end up buying something which is ok, not brilliant, just for the sake of it. This is where wrong decisions are made.’ Houso aims to solve these problems and remove uncertainty by enabling vendors to list their home, for free, in order to gauge buyer interest. This pre-market exposure enables vendors to build a waiting list of people keen to buy their home. It gives the vendor the confidence to go house-hunting themselves, safe in the knowledge that there are interested parties in their own home. Then when the vendor finds their perfect next home, the transactional time could be greatly reduced. Melanie Bien, director of property PR agency Bien Media, says : ‘We are delighted to be working with Houso to raise awareness of what they are trying to do, which is to resolve what are real issues with the whole process of buying and selling property. Anyone who has sold a home has been there – trying to find an interested and qualified buyer at the same time as finding the dream home that you wish to buy, and having an offer accepted on it. That’s a lot of pressure on things happening at the right time and in this market with such low levels of stock available, it’s increasingly difficult to achieve.’ www.houso.co.uk
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Seven property experts give their views as to what will happen with the property market in 2017
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