Nigel Lewis is an experienced property journalist and head of content for the Digital Property Group (the owners of FindaProperty, Primelocation and Globrix). Read on for an interesting take on why Brits are obsessed with property, the future of home-ownership and Government confusion.
You began working, as a journalist, covering the property market right at the start of the most recent boom. Property prices were leading the news and everybody seemed to want to claim their stake in what appeared to be something of a gold rush. Did you “happen into” property journalism… or was the market something you were already interested in?
I had covered a variety of subjects before coming to property, including fishing, motoring and personal finance, but was then invited to join a property dotcom during the late 1990s called smove.com – now defunct – and I immediately warmed to bricks and mortar. But I was then offered a job at the Daily Mail working on its property pages. I love writing about bricks and mortar because it’s so wide ranging, covering personal stories, celebrity moves, government policy and construction, planning – I could go on. But I don’t remember readers and the media being quite so obsessed with house prices then as they are now.
Was anybody questioning the wisdom of house price gains of 20% in 12 months?
I am old enough to have witnessed and worked through two property downturns and during the run up to the current one, or the ‘gold rush’ you refer to, experiences from the previous downturn were ignored by both home owners and many in the industry, not to mention most property writers and that included, sometimes, me. When people’s homes are rising in value so fast, it’s hard to persuade national newspaper editors to calm down – it is a good story at the end of the day.
The period was also characterised by the rise of the popular property TV show, and of the powerful online property portal. You’ve worked for both… do you think television and technology have shaped or altered the British public’s relationship with property?
Read the rest of the interview by clicking here.
TV programmes such as Location, Location, Location only reflect rather than drive public opinion about buying and selling homes – TV is always some way behind public trends, in my experience. On the other hand online portals have revolutionised the way we all look for a home and helped shape habits - so much so house hunting on PrimeLocation.com, for example, has become a pastime as well as a useful tool for millions of us. Portals have changed property into almost a commodity – pricing, stock availability and property information are now all very transparent. And it’s free to use.
Congratulations on FindaProperty’s recent win (Property Portal of the Year) at the LSL Property Press Awards. Can you describe what your current position (as head of content for The Digital Property Group) involves on a day-to-day basis?
Thanks! I head up a team of three journalists and we write content for all our portals (FindaProperty.com, PrimeLocation.com and Globrix.com) including articles, news and blogs but also manage and write for our Twitter and Facebook accounts, plus we support our PR teams with ideas and research. We are also each brand’s media representatives on TV, radio and print and write for a range of magazines, newspapers and websites within the Northcliffe media network and beyond – so local newspapers such as the Nottingham Evening Post and sites like thisisbristol.co.uk. Our weekly property column is syndicated among some 80 newspapers and websites every month.
For the Rat and Mouse, the inherent contradictions and self-deception of the British relationship with property is fascinating and largely inspired the blog. Houses are both hugely emotional purchases and important personal investments. Is it a mistake to think the two can comfortably mix?
I think it is fine to have these two contradictions rubbing shoulders within a home; there are plenty of other high value, emotional purchases we treat as ‘investments’ too such as jewellery, art, classic cars and so on. What’s more interesting for me is why only a handful of nations have embraced property ownership so enthusiastically, led by the British. My best guess is that it’s the countries where free market economics have been let loose almost without restriction on economies that no longer rely on manufacturing to create wealth as much as they used to – so us, Iceland, Ireland, the USA and Spain. So the one way we can all enrich ourselves, the argument went, was to buy a property and for a long time it seemed to work.
We’ve seen a very slow market and falling house prices (in some areas). But – nationally – houses remain, by most established methods of calculation, unaffordable. The Government appears to think the way to deal with this is to fiddle around with different ways of justifying loans. Are they right?
I think they have no idea what to do. Twenty years of aggressive house price rises, an economy reliant too much on housing equity to create public confidence and a banking sector free to lend to anyone means we have travelled too far down a road that’s now difficult to reverse out of, particularly during an economic downturn. If prices drop it would be catastrophic for millions of home owners with large mortgages – while restricted lending makes it hard to get loans to buy houses, particularly for first-time buyers. So the only option is to put the market into a sort of limbo which, roughly speaking, is what we have now.
Where next? How do you see the market developing in the next five years? How can banks act more responsibly and retain larger liquidity buffers and enable homebuyers to borrow, whilst at the same time property remains at unrealistic multiples to earnings? Is it time to re-evaluate renting, and work on its image?
The rental sector is going to expand slowly but surely over the next five years. The government-backed schemes that try to help first-time buyers onto the ladder are a good idea but barely touch the sides of the overall problem. Every year another 300,000 or so people don’t get on the property ladder and they have no option but to rent. I’ve said in the past that we could end up like Germany, where a minority own – and everything points to that becoming a more and more likely scenario. I think at the very least ownership will dip below 60% soon. The one area for growth is the upper end of the market, or the top 25% prime sector, which so far has been immune to the downturn, and will probably remain so.
Finally, it’s a bit of an R&M tradition to end with a favourite estate agency joke. It is – of course – optional, but if you’d like to share…
Why did the property journalist stop drinking? To help make their story stand up.
Cheers, Nigel, for your time. It really is appreciated.
Visit Nigel's personal website here, or follow him on Twitter here.
