Hopefully, for those of us that are of the football persuasion, and certainly England supporters, we’re now feeling a little less raw and painful.
Despite losing on penalties in the final, the England football team appeared to capture the national mood through the tournament after a fairly torrid 18 months preceding it.
They encapsulated a party mood – a mood of hope, potential and light at the end of the tunnel.
We won’t spend the next 500 or so words making tortuous comparisons between property, the national mood and the England football team, however, it made us reflect on the symbolism of renewal, of hope and of potential, so we’ve decided to put together 3 reasons why you should be cheerful about the rest of the year.
1. Vaccines
As we’ve written on this website before, these vaccines against COVID-19 – developed in just under a year – represent one of the biggest human achievements in the history of our existence.
That’s not being dramatic, either. This is the fastest and most successful vaccine programme in human history and as we stand at the time of writing, two thirds of the UK adult population are now fully vaccinated, whilst almost 90% have received at least one dose.
To get almost the entire population partially vaccinated in a little over 6 months is absolutely remarkable and represents the reason we’re on our way out of this pandemic.
2. The economy
‘The economy’ sounds a little vague and ambiguous because it probably is if you’re looking solely at the sector you work or operate in and, of course, there are areas of the UK economy that are not recovering and will not recover as quickly as other parts.
That being said, the economy grew by 0.8% in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in May alone. The CBI predicts that the UK economy will continue to grow into the Autumn and will grow by 8.2% this year and 6.1% next year.
This impressive performance represents some of the quickest growth in decades, which is a testament to the excellent economic recovery as things start to return to some form of normality.
3. UK property
Of course, more on topic, the UK property market has, over the past 2 years, been phenomenally successful.
UK house prices grew by over 10% year-on-year in that time and rental incomes are also growing quickly. Because the two appear to be growing in tandem this has kept property yields high too.
For those looking for solid income generating investments then property in the UK represents one of the best returns out there at the moment.
Demand is still sky high and supply, whilst tight, is still there to offer people with more capital following the pandemic a great place to grow their money.
This doesn’t look set to change soon either, with more and more people looking for rental property in the private sector, and more people than ever looking to invest into buy-to-let property.
Overall, there are many reasons to be hopeful and cheerful this summer!
