FORTEM PROPERTY MARKET REVIEW Q1: 2023
The Q1 2023 Property Market Review from Fortem is now available for you to download with a detailed look at the property landscape across the challenging and changeable quarter.
The first quarter of 2023 brought us the Spring Budget, two hikes in the base rate and a revised economic forecast, which suggested that the UK would narrowly avoid a recession this year despite a predicted -0.2% fall in economic activity. This all contributed to a complex landscape in which numerous forces are at work, some of them pushing in opposing directions.
However, if anything became clearer over the last quarter, it was that the property market looks set to avoid the ‘cliff edge’ crash that some of the more pessimistic commentators had forecast. Capital growth has certainly been slower than in 2022, but then such rates were never going to be sustainable, and what we’re seeing now looks more like a gradual adjustment back towards UK annual norms.
In the meantime, while that adjustment continues, tenant demand remains very strong and, in many areas, rental growth has outpaced the UK’s unusually high rate of inflation.