Your daily market update from Knight Frank Research Tuesday 21st April
Good morning
3 minutes to read
Economic headlines
In markets overnight, equities declined across Asia-Pacific, with benchmarks in Seoul, Sydney and Shanghai down over 1% and Hong Kong more than 2%. The big story was the price of US oil, which clawed its way back above $0 after plunging to negative territory on Monday.
In a remarkable turn of events that illustrates the truly unprecedented scale of the temporary shutdown to economies around the world, producers were at one point paying more than $40 a barrel to buyers who could help relieve them of their oil as a glut left them with few places to store it.
As the UK's daily death toll dropped to its lowest level in a fortnight, scrutiny is growing as to how and when the government will be able to ease restrictions on movement.
Carl Heneghan, director of the centre for evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, said the passing of the peak of infections meant the current measures were no longer necessary.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, the Trade Secretary, and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, are reported to be concerned about the implications of a long-term shut down of the UK economy, and want to ease restrictions sooner, while Boris Johnson is reportedly cautious about easing the lockdown following his spell in hospital.
Elsewhere, southern states across the US are beginning to reopen their economies. Denmark hopes to lead Europe out of lockdown with a pledge to test everybody with symptoms. France is aiming to follow suit by pledging to test everyone with coronavirus symptoms by May 11, when it also plans to ease its lockdown restrictions.
Property market headlines
Housing market data for March is beginning to be released across a number of international markets, and Kate Everett-Allen has run her analysis of the findings. She confirms that sales volumes have picked up in Hong Kong through the first three months of the year. Six of the nine cities that have published sales volume data for March were still managing to show an improving scenario with the annual rate of growth in sales either increasing or the rate of decline moderating.
The full impact of Covid-19 on global markets is likely to be revealed when April data is released – to understand where this data might be pointing we will be taking the pulse of the London market in new post tomorrow which will look at activity volumes across the city in the past few weeks.
While the construction and house building sectors have had to close down much activity in the teeth of movement restrictions, new data from Glenigan suggests that 430 sites received consent for residential development in March across the UK, compared with the February figure of 327, suggesting developers are preparing themselves for activity post-lockdown.
Meanwhile mortgage lenders are showing increasing appetite to lend at high loan-to-value ratios after being overwhelmed at the beginning of the lockdown. We'll publish more on this tomorrow.
We'll leave you with this diary from Knight Frank Kensington’s Jessica Bishop, who finds international buyers are prepared to take the long view on London.
If you have any questions, please contact me, or the team.