March 2021 Investor Update
For many, March has been a month filled with hope of things to come. The Budget strengthened the outlook for the property market with the expected extension of the stamp…
For many, March has been a month filled with hope of things to come. The Budget strengthened the outlook for the property market with the expected extension of the stamp duty holiday and also the unveiling of a mortgage guarantee scheme that will provide a big boost to demand with an increase in mortgages on offer to those with just a 5% deposit. Importantly for investors, the much discussed increase in capital gains tax rates did not materialise in a step that could herald a more relaxed tax environment for property investors. These factors will bolster what we see as a strong environment for house price growth with an excess of demand over supply, ongoing fiscal and monetary stimulus and a bounce back from the pandemic with people reassessing their lives and deciding to spend some of their pent up savings on moving to more comfortable accommodation.
We also applauded the announcement of the UK’s first ever infrastructure investment bank in Leeds and the promise of increased investment in both public and private projects to finance the UK’s progress towards Net Zero. With an increasing amount of investors wishing to see their money backing social and environmental causes in addition to generating a good return, our pipeline of property investments is now focusing exclusively on ESG projects.
Closer to home, we saw a record number of smaller deposits on the Exchange and, as we write, are in the process of completing on a property for Nacro in Egham.
Property Pipeline
We are close to completing on two further properties for Nacro, one in Hastings and one in Egham, London. The Egham property we are aiming to complete on today (31 March) and we have exchanged contracts on the Hastings property with completion due on 8 April.
There has been some progress up the chain for the Nacro property in Bristol. We are receiving regular updates but unfortunately legal processes are running very slowly at the moment.
This month we added a new Property pipeline view to our Exchange where you can see properties where a sale is agreed and the best estimate of a completion date for each.
Marketing
The focus for our communication campaigns this month turned to the ISA market and we continued to increase posting across all our social feeds, so please follow us if you haven’t already. We are also about to conduct research across a small sample of our existing user base to identify key information for marketing purposes – what media our users like to read, what they think our strengths and weaknesses are, who are the key influencers in our market or how Assetz Exchange fits into their investment portfolio. If you’d be interested in helping us with this research, please email peter.read@housemartin.co to arrange a call.
Website improvements
Our developers have been very busy this month adding many features that have been requested by users. If there is any feature or improvement you would like to see then please get in touch.
Highlights include:-
- Property pipeline view added to the Exchange
- Email alerts when a property update is posted (this can be switched off in your Account settings)
- Change to the columns in the Summary report to make them consistent with the list view
- Bug fix to Last updated sort in List view
There are a number of significant changes that we have in the development pipeline.
The first is to remove the need to cash settle bids. Similar to Assetz Capital we are looking to allow users to place as many bids as they wish which will only be settled if they have the required cash in their account.
We are also looking to change the trading increments on the Exchange to increments rounded to the thousand (the existing set up is a legacy of the old website).
After that, another key project moving forward is to investigate introducing an auto invest facility.
Read our latest blogs
Please keep up to date with our latest blog posts. What are the pros and cons of an Innovative Finance ISA? and 5 reasons why you should use your ISA allowance to invest in property
Updates on existing properties
Please refer to the individual updates which are posted on the Investment details pages.