2017 - Challenges Ahead

If we believe the media, 2017 promises to be a challenging year for our industry. Confidence will be down and finance harder to find. Plus, money will be more expensive. Decisions will take longer to be made, and there will be less offshore money seeking a home here.

But it is a challenge that we should relish. After all, as the memorable quote says “if it was easy, everyone would do it”.

There is no doubt that market conditions will change. We anticipate that with rising interest rates and tougher borrowing hurdles imposed by all the banks, that some heat will go out of the owner/occupier market. As it should. We have been critical of some of the advice doled out by suburban accountants encouraging clients to buy their own premises. Obviously this has been a benefit to Expedio, but in many cases those owner/occupiers would have been better placed investing their funds in growing their business, rather than becoming a property owner.

And with fewer businesses seeking to become owner/occupiers, that means more needing to lease – so we just need to change our focus. We believe that flexibility will be the key for 2017. It’s not that what has worked in the past won’t work in the future. It’s more that subtle changes to the economic and political landscape, both domestically and internationally, could mean major changes in attitudes to investment. And that means we need to be prepared to be flexible and prepared to change our mindsets in response.