Islay Robinson, chief executive officer of Enness Private Clients, pointed out that as the practicalities of a separation may take years to implement this could leave the market in a limbo state and foreign investors are likely to continue to hold off to see how the United Kingdom performs on its own.
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With Britain waking up to a new and uncertain dawn, Cluttons, the leading global real estate consultancy has said that for those invested in the property market, the deterioration in the value of sterling overnight will have erased any gains in recent years, particularly buyers from the Gulf, whose currencies retain a fixed peg to the U.S. dollar.
He explained that demand for prime London property rests on a wide range of drivers most of which are unaffected by the referendum decision such as the scale of London’s business cluster, depth of skills, education, lifestyle and language.
Hometrack insight director Richard Donnell says: “The immediate impact is likely to be a fall in housing turnover and a rapid deceleration in house price growth as buyers adopt a wait and see the short term impact on financial markets and the economy at large”.
Galliard Homes believe that if Brexit happens the London economy could falter and the uncertainty could cause a value drop in the property market in a very short time.
Traditionally, London has remained an investment hotspot for HNIs in India.
But what will become of the UK’s house prices?
“The luxury end of the housing market is likely to be impacted”. He adds, “London’s resilience is second to none” and while “house prices may be cooling slightly in the face of geopolitical uncertainty – this is offering bullish buyers opportunities”. He says in a blog written today: “Those who are looking to purchase a holiday home overseas, after an initial hiatus, are likely to see that owning a property in the European Union will only be marginally more complex than it is now. If interest rates don’t go up, that will help reduce volatility in the market as a rate rise affects confidence”. ‘History shows that external shocks can reduce sales volumes by as much as 20% with sales volumes already down over the a year ago.
“Even a sharp fall in the Sterling is unlikely to attract overseas buyers in the near term”.
British nationals do, however, need a visa to enter popular destinations that are not members of the European Union, including Turkey and the United States – where many thousands of us also own property, apparently undeterred. But a vote to Remain, it added, would see the market get over the referendum uncertainty by the last quarter of 2016.
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He advises: “UK buyers should always consider the sterling/euro exchange rate to ensure they negotiate a good deal when converting their currency, but there are many outside factors which affect the exchange rate and we predict sterling will strengthen once the uncertainty has been removed”.
