Property Review - June 2026
Thank you Howard Davis for writing this article. Howard is Managing Directory of Howard Independent East Agents.
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Howard comments on how a major new film release based on the fashion industry serves to highlight some big changes in property over the past two decades.
The highly anticipated release of The Devil Wears Prada 2 serves as a stark reminder of just how much has changed in fashion, marketing and media since the original film hit cinemas twenty years ago. The central cast might look remarkably similar, but the fantasy and real worlds they inhabit have shifted entirely.
The same can be said for the UK property industry.
Back in 2006 we were riding a booming sellers’ market. It was buoyant, fast-moving, and immensely profitable for existing homeowners. However, hindsight reveals a market that was precariously leveraged and structurally unaffordable for the next generation. We were living on borrowed time, setting the stage for the 2008 financial collapse.
Today the psychology of home ownership has fundamentally shifted. We no longer view our homes as the guaranteed fast-growth investment vehicles they were in 2006. Instead, the market is heavily restricted by tighter lending limits and squeezed by the ongoing cost of living crisis. The silver lining? While prices are not skyrocketing the strict regulations mean a 2008-style crash is far less likely, creating a much more stable buying environment.
We still need roofs over our heads, but our expectations of those roofs have evolved over the last two decades. For instance, we are now acutely mindful of environmental shifts - bracing for colder winters, hotter summers, and wetter springs - and our property choices increasingly reflect this. Furthermore, parents now realise that a family home must adapt to a new reality: housing not just growing children but providing open-ended accommodation for adult offspring who cannot afford to leave the nest.
The traditional path to asset building has also warped. Twenty years ago, buying a fixer-upper to renovate and flip for a profit was a standard way to climb the property ladder. Today punitive Stamp Duty rates and the soaring costs of building materials and skilled labour have turned that strategy into a distant memory.
Even how we consume property data has changed and will do more. Over the next few years further disruption will be driven rapidly by AI. It is entirely possible that traditional property portals will cease to exist, replaced by entirely new methods of influence.
Yet one major friction point remains stubbornly unchanged from 2006, and that is the archaic way we convey property; the sheer time it takes and the uncertainty it engenders acts as a heavy anchor on the market, threatening transactions, wasting money, and hampering social mobility.
But in the end, much like The Devil Wears Prada 2, the central characters of the story remain the same: the estate agents. In an increasingly automated world, they still provide the human touch, professional in what they do, navigating the emotional highs and lows of moving home and doing so with a level of care that an algorithm simply cannot replicate in 2026 - or 2046 for that matter.
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