Our thoughts

Carney. The boy that cried wolf.
20th September 2017

It wasn’t that long ago, four years in fact, that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney declared that interest rates, and the prospect of them going up, would depend on the UK unemployment level dropping below 7%.

Last week the Office for National Statistics stated that unemployment now stood at 4.3%, its lowest level since the 1971.

So what can we conclude? Possibly the Governor did not know what he was talking about or he was using the wrong criteria in determining what will happen to interest rates. Either way, his latest comments at the IMF in Washington, which focused on Brexit and inflationary pressures on rates, are successfully leading to more uncertainty in the UK property market. This is creating buying opportunities, but don’t expect every property to be as flexible on price as a diesel car.