I was intending to write one of those ‘Ten tips to change your life’ lists that fill so many column inches at this drab time of year. But I got no further than ‘Buy bigger trousers’. Instead, I’ll tackle some of the obvious questions you might be asking as you watch snow turn to slush and wait for the boiler repair bloke to answer his phone. Can I cheer you up? Let’s see.
First, will 2025 be a good year to buy a new home (a decision that should always be taken on at least a five-year time horizon)? Pundits see house prices going up (and mortgage rates eventually coming down) in 2025, but not by much. More usefully, Savills predicts 23.4 per cent average nationwide price growth by 2029 – higher in the north, lower in London – while another estate agency, Hamptons, thinks London will lead with three-year growth of 14.5 per cent. In short, if you’ve spotted a place you like and can afford, go for it: you’re unlikely to lose. But don’t even think about taxed- and red-taped-to-death buy-to-let.
Never a bad time
Next, will this be a good year to start a business? One thing I’ve learned from the breed of young entrepreneurs who enter our Economic Innovator Awards is that they’re largely oblivious to politics and economics. This may not be a good moment to launch, let’s say, a concierge service for the super-rich, or to buy a village pub. In every sector, employment costs are rising, the tax regime has turned hostile and patient capital is scarce. But if you truly believe you have a brilliant idea in AI or greentech or bioscience, there’s never a bad time to test the market. And when you’re ready to float or sell your would-be unicorn, perhaps a decade hence, let’s hope the UK is friendlier for enterprise and wealth creation.
Contracyclical
Could 2025 be a good year for UK equities – or don’t you care, because you hold one of those global fund portfolios that rarely buy UK shares at all? I hesitate to offer investment advice after my steer-clear-of-bitcoin blooper ahead of the triumph of Donald Trump that sent crypto soaring. There is, however, a view, as this column’s veteran stock-market guru Robin Andrews puts it, that despite the continuing shrinkage of London share listings, ‘the out-of-fashion UK must be a classic contracyclical bet’.
And here’s support from the Edinburgh-based ‘active equity’ investment firm Martin Currie, part of the trillion-dollar Franklin Templeton group: ‘UK Equities are an exceptional opportunity… This currently unloved asset class is trading at historically (and internationally) low valuations whilst offering access to a diverse range of interesting companies benefiting from an underappreciated UK economic strength. And let’s not forget an average dividend yield of almost 4 per cent… Interesting, right?’
Turn out the lights
Finally, will 2025 be a good year to leave the country – and where should you go? One serial entrepreneur told me his new year resolution was to think positively about the Prime Minister, but that by the weekend he was already struggling and reaching for the whisky decanter. In truth, with two terms of Labour incompetence and economic retreat in prospect, he (and you) would be mad not to consider the overseas options.
My own stints abroad in my twenties and thirties were life-changingly positive. If I was young and tech-skilled today, I’d try California; if I could start again in journalism, New York; if I could work from anywhere, Barcelona or Lisbon; if ‘property purchasing power’ was a priority, South Africa. The British Expat Report 2024, commissioned by Currencies Direct, found no less than 48 per cent of British IT workers and 30 per cent in healthcare (plus, strangely, 35 per cent of Mancunians) at least daydreaming of leaving – and it’s not hard to see why. However rich, mind you, I wouldn’t buy a chalet in the Alps, where snowlines recede as wealth taxes advance. On the other hand, I wouldn’t let lower taxes set my compass: seriously, who wants to live in Andorra? But I might buy a boat and potter from port to Mediterranean port: currently, I’m told, the rugged Croatian coast offers a fine combination of charm and value.
Buy the shares but leave the country? What kind of perverse advice is that, you’re wondering. But whatever your choices, to paraphrase a Sun headline: ‘Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?’ They can always be turned on again when Keir Starmer’s lot have exited stage-left.
Guinness is good for you
How extraordinary, in a world of just-in-time supply-chain science, that a product as ubiquitous as Guinness should fall into shortage – even provoking the opportunist theft of a lorryload of kegs equivalent to 35,200 pints from a Northamptonshire depot. More surprising still, the demand surge has come not from depressed Irish poets but from TikTok-led Gen Z fashion-followers trying to ‘split the G’ by taking a swig deep enough to lower the liquid line halfway through the Guinness name on a branded pint glass.
Whatever floats your boat, kids. I’m partial to a dark drop myself, especially as a fortifier in early-morning airport departure lounges – a taste that probably lingers from my expat days in south-east Asia, where (as in parts of Africa) Guinness used to be marketed for its ‘strengthening’ properties.
Therein lies a possible solution to the problem for Guinness’s owner, the Diageo drinks conglomerate. The old ads’ shameless subliminal suggestion was that the product (especially the stronger bottled Foreign Extra Stout) boosted male potency. But Gen Z have reportedly turned ‘sex-negative’, many of them embracing celibacy. If brewery output is already at maximum, all the marketing men need do to relieve the pressure is feed TikTok the ancient legend that ‘Guinness makes you go all night’.
Comments