Midweek property news update - 4 August
Senior investment, broadening broadband and resilient residential markets
3 minutes to read
Seniors housing investment
Latest research released this morning confirms that the seniors housing sector is benefitting from increased institutional investment. But delivery is still falling well short of demand.
The number of seniors housing units in the UK is forecast to increase by 9% over the next five years, taking the total supply of seniors housing units to just shy of 820,000, research from Oliver Knight shows.
Yet even with this forecast expansion, this will only equate to around 3% of total UK housing stock. Crucially, it will also be dwarfed by the expected growth in the population of seniors in the UK, deepening the supply/demand imbalance that already exists.
Data from the ONS suggests the number of people aged 65+ is forecast to rise by 22% to 15.1 million in the coming decade.
Broadening broadband connections
The Times reports that nearly 1.85 million houses in rural England will receive improved broadband infrastructure as part of government “levelling up” efforts, called Project Gigabit.
26 counties have been earmarked for funds, including Shropshire, Suffolk and the Isle of Wight. Gigabit broadband would dramatically improve connection qualities for many regions, and is considered “future-proof” in that it will be able to handle new technologies, as well as multiple users on a single line making demands.
Chris Druce reported on the large proportion of people that now see access to high-speed broadband as a leading requirement when looking for a new home. In the Knight Frank sentiment survey, when asked: ‘when thinking about a home, how important are the following factors to you now compared to before the pandemic?’, access to high-speed broadband was the single most popular category overall with 61%.
House View
The latest iteration of the House View has gone live this morning. These views represent Knight Frank’s latest thinking on the key trends which will impact on property markets. They are updated periodically and represent a high-level assessment based on our own research.
In this update we look at global travel implications, retail and office markets bouncing back to life, inflation concerns and the critical issues driving property market performance.
Unsurprisingly, the ongoing implications arisen from Covid-19 are examined as everything from office space, the retail recovery and travel continue to impact the flow of capital around the world. You can read about this and all the other relevant trends and topics that are important to you, here.
Resilient Asia-Pacific markets
Knight Frank has released its Asia-Pacific Residential Review for H1 2021. Deep-diving into the performance of the Asia-Pacific residential markets, the report discusses the cross-border residential land acquisition activity in 24 cities across Australasia, East Asia, and South Asia.
Victoria Garrett, head of residential, Asia-Pacific says: “The residential recovery continues to be underpinned by strong domestic demand, attractive interest rates, and flight-to-safe-haven assets.
Amid Covid-19 fears arising from the new Delta variant, home buyers and investors taking a longer-term view on the growth prospects of Asia are not deterred by the short-term volatility.”
You can access the full report here.
In other news…
Scotland restrictions ending, Singapore to grant first Cyrpto licence, Amber watchlist scrapped, chip shortage hampering car makers, Marriott profit beats estimates, and new build EPCs up 16%.
Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash