John Stepek

And also, I think the one thing that we haven't discussed is younger people are more transient.

They have more than one career.

They think of themselves living in more than one place.

And home ownership isn't the thing it was when Thatcher got everyone very excited about it in the 80s, that it became the goal of all young people was to try and get on the housing ladder that started a demand from the bottom.

That doesn't really exist anymore, you know.

And I think you're seeing that in the kind of more expensive boroughs in central London.

Volumes of sales and transactions are massively down, but construction is up, right?

One in three houses on every prime street has got work going on because people have realised that they might as well spend money on their own home and improve it than move to a bigger or a smaller house because...

at least the stamp duty is going to cost more than the refurbishment or the extension or whatever it is they wanted to do to their house.

So everyone's locked in their own homes.

We're all kind of trapped now.

So it's just the way it is, right?

The slight glimmer of hope might be events in the Middle East have maybe made people think about where they want to live and is London the worst place in the world, like everyone was talking about six months ago, and maybe it's a bit safer and a bit more secure.

So I think that will create a bit of stimulus to the rental market in prime central London.

which will at least help landlords who own property and stop desperate selling that could collapse the market even further.

So money coming in to the market via rentals is better than no money coming in at all.

So that's a shred of light.

I just think there's so much political and macro uncertainty and buying a property is...

It's a fixed, illiquid asset.

So why would you do that at the moment unless you can buy something at what is perceived to be historically very, very low prices?