Property expert Phil Spencer on future house prices, mortgage rates and his best ever investment...

Daily Mail​

6 hours ago

Property is a favorite British conversation topic. Nearly everyone has an opinion on where house prices are heading, the next property hotspot or where homes should - and shouldn't - be built.
But to get a true sense of what's driving the market, it is worth listening to the people who live and breathe property day in, day out.
In this series, we put an expert through their paces each month.
We want to know their view on all of the hot-button topics mentioned above as well as mortgage rates, buy-to-let and housebuilding.
We will even question them about their very own mortgage, and their best and worst investments to date.
This month we spoke to Phil Spencer, a property expert and co-presenter of the long-running Channel 4 show, Location, Location, Location.
Away from television, he has also published three books and founded the property advice website Move iQ.
1. What will house prices do over the next 12 months?
I get asked this question a lot, and I've long since stopped trying to give an exact answer. It's pure crystal ball territory.
There's no single answer anyway. While the official statistics and house price indices do produce a national average figure, the only number that matters is how prices are doing where you live - or where you want to live.
The most important factor in determining prices in a local area is the balance between supply and demand. At present, there are more buyers than sellers in much of northern England and in Northern Ireland - and this is driving prices up.
Meanwhile in London and south east England, the opposite is true; buyers there are often spoilt for choice and able to drive a hard bargain, and this is keeping a lid on values.
The other factor to watch is the cost of borrowing. Mortgage interest rates have been creeping down so far this year, and this has two effects - it encourages more people to buy and may allow them to borrow more money - both of which tend to push prices upwards.
On balance, average prices are likely to rise over the next year, but there's a real north-south divide in terms of how fast.
2. What will happen to prices over the next decade?
If you need a crystal ball to see one year ahead, forecasting 10 years ahead is nigh-on impossible.
But even factoring in the potential for wildly unexpected events - another pandemic for example - and the regular economic cycle, the likelihood is that prices will keep rising over the next decade.
Official data from the Land Registry shows that between March 2015 and March 2025, the average price paid for a home in the UK rose by 53.8 per cent, and that period included both Brexit and Covid.
While you should never treat past performance as a guide to what's coming next, two facts hold true; the UK population is rising, and as a country we're not building enough new homes to keep up with demand.
This shortage of homes means that average prices are likely to continue creeping up over time, even if we never quite escape the cycle of boom and bust.
3. Where will mortgage rates be in 12 months?
Predicting mortgage rates is a little easier, as the mortgage industry keeps a running tally of where it expects the Bank of England base rate to go.
While this measure - known as the swap rate - is constantly being updated, it does give useful clues as to the direction of travel for mortgage interest rates.
The Bank of England base rate has been cut twice in 2025 so far, and this has allowed lenders to reduce the interest rates they charge on their mortgages.
Some are now offering rates below 4 per cent, though these tend to be limited to borrowers with a large deposit.
The swaps market is currently suggesting that there will be one more cut to the base rate in the second half of 2025, and this should lead to more mortgage rates that start with a 3 rather than a 4.
The picture for this time next year is less clear, but if inflation calms down from its current spike we should see mortgage rates continue to ease down - though it's unlikely they'll go back below 3 per cent any time soon.
4. Will Labour hit its 1.5m home target?
It's a hugely ambitious target, that equates to building 300,000 new homes - in England alone - every year during the current parliament.
The country hasn't built at that level for more than half a century, and the construction sector needs to overcome some big hurdles if it's to have any chance of meeting the target.
Reducing planning red tape to make it easier for developers to buy land and get building is one, and the Government has promised to do this with its Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
But the construction industry has structural problems too, not least a chronic shortage of labour.
The average age of a construction worker in the UK is now over 50 and not enough young people are joining the workforce to replace them.
As these older workers start to retire, their skills will be lost if there's no-one to follow in their footsteps.
Importing skilled foreign workers to do the work helped the industry paper over the cracks for a time, but this has become trickier following Brexit and it isn't a long-term solution.
The industry needs to get better at recruiting and retaining young people if it is to deliver the number of homes being asked of it.
5. What is the most urgent property crisis?
It's still a bit under the radar, but there is a crisis brewing in the private rental sector.
One in five households rents their home from a private landlord, and half of these landlords own just a handful of properties.
Whenever these landlords decide to sell up, there are rarely many - or any - buy-to-let buyers willing to replace them.
Since last October's Budget, buy-to-let investors have to pay a 5 per cent stamp duty surcharge when they buy a property, and this has led demand from buy-to-let buyers to fall sharply.
While this is good news for first-time buyers - for whom these ex-rental properties can be good value - it's bad news for renters, as every time a rental property leaves the market it means one less home available to rent.
The increasing scarcity of rental properties is pushing up rents fast. Average rents in the UK rose 7.4 per cent in the year to April, but in popular areas the rate of inflation is much higher.
House prices might hog the headlines, but millions of people either can't or don't want to buy a home. For them, such rapidly rising rents are a serious problem that risks turning into a full-blown crisis.
6. Are landlords being unfairly targeted?
There are some bad landlords out there, but they are a tiny minority. So it's unfair that the thousands of good landlords get tarred with the same brush.
The Renters' Rights Bill, which is due to become law later this year, will shake up the rules governing England's rental sector.
It gives significant additional protections to tenants and imposes tough restrictions on landlords, but some people question whether it has got the balance right.
It should limit the ability of rogue landlords to mistreat their tenants. But what if there's a rogue tenant?
Responsible landlords will find it much harder to evict people who fail to pay the rent or abuse the property.
So it could prove self-defeating if it prompts good landlords to pull out of the rental sector entirely.
7. Is buy-to-let a good or bad investment today?
If you'd asked me this six months ago, it would have been hard to make the case for buy-to-let.
The steadily rising cost of being a landlord has made it increasingly hard to make the numbers add up in some parts of the country.
The introduction of the Stamp Duty surcharge in the October Budget - which now adds 5 per cent to the cost of buying an investment property - made some people declare 'game over' for the buy-to-let sector.
But since then mortgage costs have come down, and rental values have continued to rise. If you're strategic about where you buy and think long-term, it can still be a sound investment.
But you need to be realistic about the returns you'll get - the days of 10 per cent yields are long-gone.
And don't underestimate what a commitment it is. This is not like popping your spare cash into an Isa and just watching it grow.
Maintenance issues and void periods can be a real headache, and as a landlord there are more than 160 separate pieces of legislation that you have to comply with, so it takes time and effort to keep on top of everything.
8. If you were Chancellor of the Exchequer, how would you help first-time buyers?
Get rid of stamp duty for first-time buyers.
This will make it easier for people to get onto the first rung of the property ladder and remove a barrier that discriminates against those who aren't fortunate enough to get help from the bank of mum and dad.
9. What's the best piece of advice you could give someone planning to sell their home?
Declutter declutter declutter.
10. What's your best ever property investment?
The first home I ever bought was a flat on a busy road in Battersea. This was 1996, when Battersea was as unfashionable as it was affordable.
The flat was spread over the second and third floors of the building, and had four bedrooms and four reception rooms.
It was too big to be a flat and maybe that explains why it wasn't snapped up. I paid £160,000 for it because I could see the potential for converting it into two flats with great views.
I received planning permission and called in an architect friend. The building firm he used was slow - taking six months instead of three - but it stuck to its price and did the job well.
I had a Mansard extension built on to the back of the roof, which made the bedrooms bigger, moved staircases, put down wooden floors and decorated it in a minimalist style.
It wasn't all plain sailing, but I learnt a lot about the legal process involved in a conversion and created two lovely flats for a cost of roughly £80,000.
I kept the one at the back as it was larger; two double bedrooms, a dining room, a living room and a small kitchen/breakfast room over two levels.
It had a lovely view and was away from traffic noise. I then sold the other one for £165,000, more than the cost of the original flat.
After three years in the flat, I decided it was time to move. I had launched my own property finding business - doing up the flats had been a catalyst for that - and I'd become engaged to Fiona and wanted a house with a garden.
I sold it for £292,000, which was a real score - sadly not one that I'm likely to repeat.
Best mortgage rates and how to find them
Mortgage rates have risen substantially over recent years, meaning that those remortgaging or buying a home face higher costs.
That makes it even more important to search out the best possible rate for you and get good mortgage advice, whether you are a first-time buyer, home owner or buy-to-let landlord.
> Mortgage rates calculator
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