Hung Parliament Is Bad News For Property

The U.K. began Friday morning with no party controlling the government, Brexit negotiations thrown into chaos and the property market facing an indefinite period of stagnation after a shock General Election result. (Read all about what happened, why it happened and what happens next here.)

Big global institutional investors are expected to continue to shun the U.K. as they have done to a large degree for the last year, and the old wisdom that uncertainty is bad for markets was very much in evidence. 

“I think you’ll see people putting off decisions on both leasing and investment,” said Kevin McGrath, chairman of M&M Property Asset Management and a former parliamentary candidate for the Labour party. 

“Things will roll into an early summer, July will come around and it will be an excuse not to do things, and on investment transactions very little will happen. Things will ground to a halt until the autumn. It was very similar last year with Brexit, nothing happened for three months after the vote.”

A number of proposed projects may be put on hold as the property sector takes stock of the result, Investec Property's Hayley Scott said. “Banks are likely to be cautious about financing new developments. Real estate as an asset class will lose favour with institutional and overseas investors as doubts hang over the U.K. real estate sector.”

And one of the world’s largest global institutional invests told Bisnow on condition of anonymity, “This has made us even more nervous than we already were. London offices is a sector we were already less focused on while Brexit plays out. It adds to the overall uncertainty we were already feeling. I think institutions and sovereign wealth funds are already spending less time on London, more on the U.S., Paris and Germany. High-net-worth investors from Asia are still very interested in London because their strategy is more based on currency and on getting capital out of their own region.”

The investor pointed out that a 1% drop in Sterling after the election news dramatically impacts sales prices. The 50% stake in the Walkie Talkie office tower up for sale for £600M had fallen by £6M for dollar investors.

“I think bids for that are in around now, and I wouldn’t want to be trying to sell that at this exact minute,” the investor said.