Welcome to your September edition of the Fish Need Water newsletter!

Here’s what we’ve got coming up:

  • Bricking it? No need!
  • All the latest need-to-know news.
  • Top tool: Receipt Bank

Bricks aplenty

The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) recently claimed that there’s a huge shortage of bricks in the UK. What’s more, that shortage is only going to get worse post-Brexit because 80% of our brick-making materials come from Europe.

The implication is that house building will grind to a halt, because… well… there’s nothing to build them with. No new houses = prices go up for everyone, which means it’s harder to get on the housing ladder and more expensive for property investors to expand their portfolios.

This news is codswallop, we say. But more to the point, so do the Brick Development Association, the Construction Products Association, the Builders Merchants Federation and all the major housebuilders in the UK.

You see, what the NAEA failed to disclose is that the data is 15 months out of date. Yes: back in 2014 there was a dramatic increase in house building, and builders were getting low on bricks. So they upped production, and now we’re fine. End of story.

So why would the NAEA decide to announce this very old and scaremongering news? We’re not entirely sure, to be honest, but we encourage you to ignore it entirely!

Want to keep up on local property news?  Follow our BLOG HERE.

Property news

‘Tis the season to be silly…

Revealed: The London areas where EU citizens’ Brexodus could harm property prices. As one commenter astutely puts it, “What a ridiculous article.”

Hong Kong agents rent out 30 sq ft “toilet room” for £200pm. And you thought London was expensive…

50,000 London pensioners are property millionaires. All but two London boroughs are home to pensioners in million-pound houses – and almost £70bn of pensioners’ property wealth is concentrated in just 13 square miles across two West London boroughs.

The property legacy of London 2012: Four years on, what’s it like to live in the Olympic village? East London is on the up.

Our useful tool of the month

Do you ever wonder how many more expenses you’d claim if only you could take better care of your receipts? You’re not alone.

Luckily, there’s a handy app called Receipt Bank, which gives you no more excuses. All you have to do is take a photo of the receipt on your phone, and the app will store it securely for you. There’s more! Receipt Bank will also extra all the key data, ready for automatic uploading to your cloud accounting software (Sage, Xero, etc.)

Get Receipt Bank here.

The end! (Until next month.)

See you in October!