…especially about the future” As a Nobel prize winning physicist, who amongst other things developed quantum theory and furthered the world’s understanding of atomic structure, Niels Bohr was probably better qualified than most to offer such an opinion. That said, very few people are immune from embracing their inner Nostradamus or the more bargain basement Mystic Meg. As history demonstrates, if we got it right more often than not, the human race would not be in the state that it is today. As we sit here watching the slow motion car crash that is the American presidential election, who would have predicted that the most powerful person in the world would be selected from those two? As one pundit put it, if the bar were set any lower, they would trip over it. Who predicts who will be choosing the new decor for the Oval Office? Closer to home who envisaged a certain N Clegg crawling back out of the post-election/party obliteration abyss to try and challenge Brexit? Actually, as someone whose whole career has been gifted to him courtesy of the EU, this perhaps shouldn’t come as the greatest surprise. Similarly, would anyone have predicted Great Britain having the Number 1 ranked tennis player in the world, or the 5th in line to the throne having a girlfriend who can be found not in Country Life or Debrett’s Peerage, but on the adult entertainment site, Pornhub (I am told that it is very informative..)? As the summer ends, so the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and forecasting arrives. Throughout November, various experts and professional organisations release their forecasts for the housing market in 2017. Give me strength. Savills, one of the big boys, was first out of the traps by releasing a five year forecast. That’s right, five years working with the Gregorian Calendar, not indulging in some kind of Dr Who-esque time travel. I must admit that I have not read the Savill’s exposition. I far prefer reading the old ones and I do wonder just where the authors are and what they are doing. If they are sitting poolside on their Caribbean island being waited on by one of a posse of pneumatic blondes, I doff my cap and will become an avid disciple of property market predictions. If they are still within the land of the rest of us mere mortals, I shall stick with reading the tea leaves and trying not to run over any black cats.
This week also gave us the news that Channel 4 are launching a new property programme called Coast v Country. The aim of the programme is to ‘persuade’ buyers who want out of city living to buy their next property either in the country or on the coast. In presenting them with potential homes in the differing locations, they will be ‘forced’to choose. Ground breaking stuff, I think you will agree. Forgive my being ever so slightly pedantic, but if you are someone who no longer wants to live in a city, then not living in a city means living in the country, or by the sea, (or on the moon, or possibly at Her Majesty’s Pleasure). Joking aside, this time next week we may all be considering a move. Depending upon who is chosen by our friends across the pond to put their finger on the red button, we may all be finding that a bunker thirty foot under ground is a very attractive proposition. I will be intrigued to see how the Savill’s forecasters describe this new concept in the housing market.
