What will the 0.25% Interest Rate do to the Aylesbury Property Market?

I had an interesting chat with an Aston Clinton landlord who owns a few properties in the town. He popped his head in to my office as his wife was shopping in town (and let’s be honest talking about the Aylesbury Property Market is a lot more interesting than clothes shopping with the wife!). We had never spoken before (because he uses another agent in the town to manage his Aylesbury properties) yet after reading my blog on the Aylesbury Property Market he wanted to know my thoughts on how the recent interest rate cut would affect the Aylesbury property market. 

Well it has been a few weeks now since interest rates were cut to 0.25% by the Bank of England as the Bank believed Brexit could lead to a materially lower path of growth for the UK, especially for the manufacturing and construction industries. You see, for the country as a whole, the manufacturing and construction industries are still performing well below the pre credit crunch levels of 2008/09, so the British economy remains highly susceptible to an economic shock. This is especially important in Aylesbury, because even though we have had a number of local success stories , a large number of people are employed in these sectors. In Aylesbury, of the 37,988 people who have a job, 3,103 are in the manufacturing industry and 2,806 in Construction meaning  

8.2% of Aylesbury workers are employed in the Manufacturing

sector and 7.4% of Aylesbury workers are in Construction 

The other sector of the economy the Bank is worried about, and an equally important one to the Aylesbury economy, is the Financial Services industry. Financial Services in Aylesbury employ 1,603 people, making up 4.2% of the Aylesbury working population.  

Together with a cut in interest rates, the Bank also announced an increase in the quantity of money via a new programme of Quantitative Easing to buy £70bn of Government and Private bonds. Now that will not do much to the Aylesbury property market directly, but another measure also included in the recent announcement was £100bn of new funding to banks. This extra £100bn will help the High St banks pass on the base rate cut to people and businesses, meaning the banks will have lots of cheap money to lend for mortgages ... which will have an effect on the Aylesbury property market (as that £100bn would be enough to buy half a million homes in the UK).

It will likely take until early in the New Year to find out the real direction of the Aylesbury property market and the effects of Brexit on the economy as a whole, the subsequent recent interest rate cuts and the availability of cheap mortgages. However, something bigger than Brexit and interest rates is the inherent undersupply of housing (something I have spoken about many times in my blog and the specific effect on Aylesbury). The severe undersupply means that Aylesbury property prices are likely to increase further in the medium to long term, even if there is a dip in the short term. This only confirms what every homeowner and landlord has known for decades ... investing in property is a long term project and as an investment vehicle, it will continue to outstrip other forms of investment due to the high demand for a roof over people’s heads and the low supply of new properties being built.

If you want to talk through your investment plans pop in to our office when you are next passing, or the wife is shopping!