The Property Market in a COVID World

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We are 10 months into the CV19 pandemic. Leaving aside the acute changes, COVID has provided a catalyst for change.

• Office based businesses have already discovered their people can be productive, engaged and happy working from home, so will home strategies be embedded into the DNA of new working practises? Some employers will retain presenteeism, but they will need larger and redesigned and serviced offices. Overall, how will occupier demands change? Is that change temporary or structural?
• In retail, traditional retailers are vociferous about the inequality of competition from online giants whose combined rent and business rates outgoings are far lower. If more retailers disappear or shift to an online business model, what then for the High Street?
• If these major classes of property experience significant market changes, surely this threatens the existing structure of the whole rating system? This, at a time when the Government is finally undertaking a fundamental review of business rates and a revaluation is already underway. Is there a risk that the Government may conclude it is all too difficult; and do nothing?
• And what of the ecology of urban space? How will cities, and local economies change? What has happened to our leisure habits? How will that affect property needs?

This seminar will be of value to commercial property managers, property agents and rating surveyors. Now, more than ever, you need to understand what is happening in the property market, the relationship between rents and business rates, how COVID-19 is changing the property world for investors, asset managers, tenants and property managers, and what all this means for the future of business rates.