Whether you are voting to stay or
voting to leave it doesn’t matter – the key is that you vote and have your say! There is nervousness from all sides but to me and more broadly an entire industry is on tender hooks as they brace themselves
through the current uncertainty and potential impact of which ever decision the
UK takes.
The house building industry is clear –
there will be pitfalls for both buyers and developers if a ‘no’ vote occurs.
But is this simply not just because the whole EU referendum is drawing
attention away from the severe lack of houses available. You can view Brexit as
having little impact on general confidence levels as the majority of UK sales
are to UK residents and the undersupply means activity levels are unlikely to
be changed as demand and pricing levels remain robust.
There is the argument though that
Brexit will impact overall investment (at least in the short term) – but more
broadly you can argue labour supply. It is already short and the EU supplies a
large amount of that supply which is desperately needed to ensure we push on
delivering houses. If we remove this supply do we bring labour shortage right
back into the issues arena.
To me the supply of labour is linked
to an under investment in apprentices but was mitigated by migration of skills
from the continent and further afield. Implications of Brexit could simply lead
to tighter regulation and therefore damage construction activity – limit supply
of skills and therefore further dampen delivery of homes. We simply wait in
baited breath for the outcome so we can deal with whatever the outcome is.
Feel free to contact me 0113 288 2276
or lee.a.wilkinson@uk.pwc.com if you wish to discuss this blog or anything relevant to
property and construction.
Lee
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