Friday property news update
Charting a path through the pandemic
3 minutes to read
Active Capital
Navigating real estate markets has become more complicated since the onset of the pandemic and requires a greater depth of analysis in order to chart the path forward. The 2020 edition of Active Capital, published this week by Knight Frank's commercial research team, does exactly that.
The report answers critical questions including; which types of real estate are likely to be targeted by investors in the months ahead and where is the money going to come from? How do you find the best green investments? And how are debt markets likely to respond to the pandemic?
This is an in-depth look at many of the topics we touch on each week in these notes and there's something for everyone, particularly data fans. Come for the bar chart race showing which global real estate sectors have fallen in and out of favour over time, stay to learn about sortino ratios.
UK jobs support
The government launched a scaled-back support package for jobs yesterday that includes a “more targeted” furlough scheme that would only be available to workers whose employers keep them on at least a third of their normal hours.
The proposal has had a mixed reception; the CBI suggested hundreds of thousands of jobs will be saved, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the plan was “much less generous” than the previous scheme and the Resolution Foundation said, though the measures will stem job losses, many businesses had little incentive to use the scheme as it would be cheaper to have one full-time employee than two staff working part time.
That all comes as a closely watched survey revealed consumer confidence ticked up in September to its highest level since the lockdown started in March, but it remains well below its pre-pandemic levels.
The global residential outlook
With the data indicating second waves of the pandemic are taking place not just across the UK but several European markets, Kate Everett-Allen takes stock of the global outlook for housing.
Consumer sentiment may waiver and transactions may moderate in the weeks ahead, but the fluctuating conditions may also spur demand for second homes as the long-term implications of the pandemic are laid bare. Governments are now better prepared, so we're unlikely we will see the housing market halt entirely as in Q2 2020 when sales were impeded.
Policymakers are also now starting to look at property or foreign buyer taxes as a means to generate income and boost public finances with Australia proposing a rise in foreign investment application tax, Spain debating a higher wealth tax and Canada mulling 'a tax on wealth inequality’.
A busy week in vaccine development
Britain is planning to host clinical trials where volunteers are deliberately infected with Covid-19. The so-called "challenge trials" are expected to begin in January at a quarantine facility in London, though there appears to be some reluctance among some drug manufacturers.
Meanwhile Novavax yesterday started a late-stage trial of its experimental vaccine in partnership with the government’s Vaccines Taskforce. The study is expected to enroll up to 10,000 participants and comes after the vaccine candidate produced high levels of antibodies against the virus in a small, early-stage clinical trial.
In other news...
Asia-Pacific’s warehouse markets were resilient in the first half of 2020, writes Mengjie Shi. Online consumption saw an uptick in activity as consumers were kept at home during lockdown periods.
Finally: SocGen says the worst is over, a Brexit deal is within touching distance, the Revamped NHS tracing app gets off to a promising start, is the NHS ready for a second wave, UK car output falls by nearly half in August; the US job rebound is ‘losing steam’, Trump declines to commit to a peaceful transfer of power a second time, and the dollar’s nascent revival shows its value as the haven currency of choice.