The property papers over the festive period made for interesting reading. Really, they did!

There were glad tidings of course and the usual jaunty optimism prevalent amongst Real Estate people; reports of big money acquisitions and disposals, possible company mergers and exciting development opportunities coming down the track in 2024. But you could detect too, notes of caution, nervousness even, as the profession eyes those external forces which, lurking in the wings like Shakespearian malcontents, threaten to bring a sea of troubles to the property markets.

So business as usual today perhaps but what of tomorrow? Birmingham City Council has joined a list of Local Authorities with serious money problems (alongside Woking, Runnymede, Leeds and others), with the Brummies declaring themselves effectively bankrupt and looking at least 600 job losses. The Public Accounts Committee has said that the debts incurred by some UK councils pose a serious risk to local services, with BBC analysis showing that councils owe a combined debt of £97.8bn, the equivalent of £1400 per person. Woking’s debt is expected to rise to £2.6bn after spending on a high rise development in its town centre and almost £500m on the last phase of the Sheerwater housing scheme which was paused last October. Should Local Authorities have been allowed to also become Property Developers? The expertise of council employees and Town Councillors surely lies in providing public services, not speculating in high-risk investment projects.

Where I live, as in many parts of the UK, we’ve had almost biblical-scale flooding. Shockingly, in an economically advanced country in 2024, valuable real estate assets and people’s homes, possessions and lives, were damaged, lost and stressfully disrupted by overflowing (and these days, often polluted) rivers. Many commercial buildings and thousands of homes will fall in value as a consequence of no longer being able to get insurance. This debacle is damning evidence of professional irresponsibility, poor governance and chronic under-investment in UK PLC. It’s bad business.

In an excellent piece in Property Week, the BPF’s Melanie Leech expressed concerns about the Government’s proposed Leasehold Reform legislation. She expects legal challenges from the Pension Funds who will lose their Freeholds of properties and suggests that smaller investors will be at risk of insolvency. She also predicts that in most cases, the management and maintenance of buildings is likely to be adversely affected.

Lastly, I would recommend CBRE’s UK Real Estate Market Outlook 2024 report, as discussed by Julia Cahill of the Estates Gazette. CBRE concluded that “Sustainability lies at the heart of the market outlook for 2024,” and that “…occupiers, investors, and lenders will accelerate their efforts to understand the physical risks to which they are exposed, not only in terms of…buildings, but also the disruption to surrounding infrastructure and communities which affect building and business operation,” which kind of brings us back to the flood management debate.

So that’s what the property pages say but how are things as a paid employee in the ivory tower of a University? Our department’s stats for graduate employment are pretty damn good but there is a growing interest in developing apprenticeship-type courses; learning on the job as it were, supported by university level teachers and mentors, rather students than spending three years full-time at college. That may well be the future for vocational subjects such as ours and it might, just might, be better for everyone. I’ll keep you posted.