What The Car Crash In The UK Auto Sector Means For Property
Not a prang, not even a crash, but a multi-vehicle pile-up: The bad news in the UK auto sector just keeps on coming, one dire announcement ploughing into the back of another.
Last week Honda announced plans to close its Swindon plant in 2022 and return manufacturing to Japan, with the loss of 3,000 jobs.
The Honda shock came just weeks after JLR announced it would shed 4,500 jobs, most of them in the UK, and Nissan decided not to manufacture the X-Trail SUV in Sunderland.
Auto manufacturing is a vital part of the UK property market outside of London. Total occupation runs into tens of millions of square feet, from the car marques themselves and on into the supply chains they support. But since 2016 auto sector take-up has been falling. In the West Midlands, for instance, it accounted for 1.5M SF of take-up in 2016, falling to just 500K SF in 2018, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
When the auto sector shrank in Detroit in the 1990s and early 2000s, an entire city was hollowed out. UK car manufacturing is not as geographically concentrated as in the U.S., but nonetheless, the changes it is going through will…
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The UK Economy Could Hinge On Whether Real Estate Investors Take Fright After Brexit
It didn't garner much attention, but in a speech to Parliament the Bank of England's Alex Brazier made a quietly remarkable statement: A major plank of the UK economy has become reliant on the commercial real estate sector.
Last year, 60% of all foreign capital that came into the UK was investment into commercial property and leveraged loans, much higher than the long-term average, the Bank's executive director for financial stability strategy and risk told MPs.
“We are reliant, as I think the governor said a few years ago, on the kindness of strangers,” Brazier said.
A reliance on the willingness of those strangers to buy UK offices, shops and blocks of flats, he could have added.
Why is this important? The UK runs the highest current account deficit in the G7, meaning the value of what we import is greater than what we export. Quarter on quarter the deficit is widening. Big current account deficits are generally…
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Brand-New From Bisnow: The Build-To-Rent Brief Gives You All You Need To Know About The UK's Hottest Sector
A new fortnightly brief from Bisnow London and Geraghty Taylor Architects will share the latest news and trends from the UK's fastest growing sector: build to rent.
Developers, investors and government entities have poured billions of pounds into build-to-rent projects,…
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Hammerson And Westfield's Croydon Scheme Once Looked A Sure Bet, But Now Even Flagship Malls Are Suffering
It took many years and much pain to put the site together, and it was supposed to be the fourth point in a compass of London super malls: Westfield London in the west, Brent Cross in the north, Westfield Stratford…
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