What's in store for us in 2021?

Would be great to have a crystal ball and predict with 100% accuracy what is going to happen in 2021, but we dont need to look further than the year what's going to finish in 1 day and realize that in fact nobody could have predicted what was to happen...

And leaving aside the pandemic, awful death toll and the numerous lockdowns, if we look at the property market, who could have said that it would increase by 7.5% in the year before Brexit?

A big part in the increase must be the stamp duty holiday to last until end of March 2021, but even before that there were signs of increasing prices, albeit less than a massive 6.6% in a year, the highest increase in 6 years.

What pandemic brought to us though is a re-thinking of priorities, people started to realize that they really need to have a space where they can truly enjoy living, as such gardens or home offices (ideally in a summer house tucked away at the back of garden) became top priorities for movers. And as a result, flats probably fell out of favour and this trend will most likely continue in 2021. And apart from gardens and home offices, at the top of the list of priorities should be closeness to green spaces and location,location,location, but this time outside the big and crammed cities.

Brexit is another unknown thrown in the mix, how will it impact the prices and priorities? Probably it will be a decreased number of European buyers entering the UK market, but that doesn't mean that there are not people from other regions of the Globe interested in buying something in UK, especially from Asia, driven here by the weak(er) pound, healthy price increases (different from region to region) and very,very good schools.

Luckily for us in Richmond, apart from having our borough named for the sixth year running the happiest place to live in London (https://www.rightmove.co.uk/press-centre/st-ives-named-happiest-place-to-live-in-great-britain/), we are blessed with plenty of green spaces (Richmond being the greenest borough in London - https://liferesidential.co.uk/news/which-londons-greenest-borough/) and have some of the best schools in United Kingdom (16 primary schools in Richmond are in the Times Top 500 best primary schools in UK, more than any other place in UK).

Adding the river Thames, the touristic atractions and the safety (Richmond is the safest borough in London - https://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/18825910.londons-neighbourhoods-safest-live/) and you can imagine that Richmond-upon-Thames has all the chances to see a healthy increase in property prices in 2021, even with the Brexit taking hold and stamp duty holiday coming to an end on 31st March 2021.

But our lives been full of unpredicted results in the past few years, and without any crystal ball, nobody really knows what will really happen in 2021 in the property market, but as with any investment, you need to take into consideration a lot of aspects before buying and as far as we are converned Richmond is as safe as it can in terms of investing money in brick-and-mortar.