Part 2: The Future of Property | The Long View with Jon Rose, Adam Lawrence & Roger Martin-Fagg
Part 2 of The Long View Podcast Episode 1. The Full Podcast will be posted on 05 June 2026.
One of the most common questions Jon hears from property investor clients right now is a simple one: should I hold, or should I get out?
Most of them aren’t under pressure to sell. They have a number in their head – perhaps £500,000 – and they’re reluctant to move at £450,000, even when £450,000 is genuinely enough for their plans. It’s a mindset challenge as much as a market question.
To help answer it, Jon put the question directly to Adam Lawrence and economist Roger Martin-Fagg – two people who spend a lot of time thinking about exactly where property prices are heading and why.
The Outlook: Cautiously Bullish
Both Adam and Roger are pointing in the same direction. Roger’s view is that prices outside London will be up around 5% by the end of the year, driven partly by a more competitive mortgage market as banks are permitted to leverage their capital at higher ratios. Adam is a touch more conservative, but they’re not far apart – and both agree the direction of travel is upward.
Adam has been publishing for over a year now that houses are cheaper than they’ve been for two decades when adjusted for inflation. That stat has only strengthened with time: by his calculation, UK property prices are now back to Q1 2003 levels in real terms. If you remember 2003, what followed was four consecutive years of significant price growth.
KEY POINT: UK house prices, adjusted for RPI inflation, are currently at their cheapest in 23 years. Adam Lawrence first published this analysis in June 2024 – and the position has moved further in buyers’ favour since.
Why Building More Won’t Fix It
One of the most striking points in the conversation concerns replacement cost – and it’s a number that rarely gets discussed plainly enough.
Adam’s rule has always been to buy below replacement cost: what would it cost to build the same property from scratch? That differential used to sit at around 40%. It’s now closer to 80–90%, and in parts of his portfolio it’s running at 300%. A flat worth £50,000 might cost £200,000 to rebuild. No developer is going to build a new flat at £200,000 to compete with a market price of £50,000 – which means that supply simply isn’t coming.
The numbers behind this are stark. The cost to build a new unit is around £76,000 more than it was in 2020, driven by construction inflation, labour costs and an accumulating layer of building and fire regulations. Half the UK is not economically viable to build on right now. Grant-funded affordable housing can fill some of the gap, but those grants buy fewer units as build costs rise.
The conclusion is straightforward: new supply cannot meaningfully address the shortage, which underpins long-term price support.
What About London?
London remains the outlier. The market there is softer, and prices may slip a further couple of percent before finding a floor. But Adam’s view is that London isn’t far from the bottom – and he’s aware of smart money buying there now. For investors who can negotiate a strong entry price, the direction of travel over a five-year horizon matters far more than where prices land in the next six months.
The Practical Take for Property Investors
If you’re sitting on a property and waiting for an exact number before you sell, it’s worth asking whether that number is actually necessary – or whether it’s an anchor that’s keeping you from making a sound decision. Jon’s experience with clients is that the difference between £450,000 and £500,000 often matters less than people think when the wider financial plan is taken into account.
And if you’re considering buying: the fundamentals are as supportive as they’ve been in over two decades. Uncertainty creates negotiating room. Supply constraints aren’t going away. And waiting for perfect conditions has a cost of its own.
