Signs that the crash is coming

UK housing market: Signs that the crash is coming - at Moneyweek.co.uk - the best of the week's international financial media.

I bumped into my estate agent in the street on Saturday. The same one who promised me six weeks ago that he'd have an offer in on my flat by Christmas. I barely recognised him, which, I suppose, is hardly surprising, given I haven't seen him since I gave him the keys. "I've been soooo busy," he said. "What?" I said "Soooo busy showing other people's flats to your thousands of clients that you didn't have time to show them mine?" He thought that was terribly funny. So funny that a mere 20 minutes later he had conjured up a viewer and brought her round. Mrs Patel, he told me, already lives in my building and likes it so much she is looking to buy a second flat in it as an investment property.

This is one of the most unlikely things I have ever heard (and not just from an estate agent). No one is looking for an investment property in Paddington at the moment. Trying to sell them before they're repossessed is much more popular. No, my guess is that, assuming Mrs Patel actually exists (I was out during The First Viewing), she is desperate to sell her flat too and wanted to have a good nose around mine to help her figure out what kind of price she can get away with putting it on the market for.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.