With four weeks and one day remaining to the general election, property group Andrews has organised what promises to be one of the key debates on how the result will impact the housing market.
Taking place on Thursday April 23 it will take the form of a panel debate with guests having the opportunity to ask questions to five independent experts from across the property sector. It will also be streamed live on YouTube from 6.30pm that day.
The panel of experts taking part in the event includes:
Michael Robson, chief executive of Andrews, who has worked at the company since joining as a trainee sales negotiator in 1976 and is a fellow of the NAEA, director of The Property Ombudsman and a trustee of the Estate Agency Foundation;
Stephen Smith, director at Legal & General Network in charge of its mortgage distribution operation, the Mortgage Club, which handles around one in five new mortgages in the UK;
Tom Lacey, chartered tax advisor at Moore Blatch, specialising in personal tax, Capital Gains Tax, IHT and the taxation of trusts.
Andy Tilsley, regional sales manager at Nationwide and now leading a team of eight business development managers responsible for delivery of both Nationwide and The Mortgage Works targets.
Mike Day, director of development and home ownership at Knightstone Housing and also the managing director of Arc Developments South West Limited, its commercial housing subsidiary company.
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Comments
The most important issue facing the industry is the potential threat to the PRS represented by some of the ideas being put forward by Labour, Shelter and Generation Rent. A lot of mis information has been spread around in this subject, the real motivation being short term vote winning. The industry needs to counter this threat with hard facts before it is too late, watch this space as a meaningful initiative is on the way
Exactly what we need. Another debate. When will it end
Should be interesting. Sometimes MPs are guilty of wading into things they know next to nothing about - to say the least - and I think housing fits that category. Hopefully these experts can offer some more balanced views. I'm sure we'll hear plenty about mansion tax, stamp duty, the PRS, buy-to-let, mortgages, Help to Buy and the issues caused by ever rising house prices.
But to me, and I'm sure many others, there is only one major topic of discussion - the crisis in housing supply. We need to build more houses, we don't need a return to Right to Buy like Mr Osborne was proposing, we don't need more foreign investors buying up property and leaving it empty, we don't need prices going even further out of reach of most ordinary people. We need to build more houses! It's been the elephant in the room for the past few decades, now something needs to be done about it.
Another election debate I can't wait...honest.