"You have strap yourself to the mast and just ride through that wave"

Simon Gerrard (pictured) has been at the helm of Martyn Gerrard Estate Agents for more than 30 years. That sort of experience gives you a gravitas you cannot buy.

Outspoken, a staunch defender of the construction sector and a standard bearer for second steppers - whom he feels get a raw deal – he’s happy to give an opinion on just about every aspect of the housing industry.

His love of all things property-related runs deep, having effectively started in the business at the tender age of eight, photocopying documents for his father who launched the family-run business more than half a century ago, in 1964.

“It runs in my blood,” he once said, adding that the thought of helping customers through the journey of finding their dream home is what gives him a buzz.

Read more: Should stamp duty be scrapped?

The belief that a home “is not just a thing” was ingrained from an early age while watching his father’s clients, a view the COVID pandemic only served to strengthen.

“People are less concerned with wealth and a little bit more concerned with living conditions, which is a good thing because I think they should think of where they live as a home rather than as an investment,” he said.

And while it’s not hard to find a mortgage professional willing to go on record to comment on the difficulties first-time buyers experience in the housing market - especially when property prices are at an all-time high - hearing about the trials and tribulations of second steppers is somewhat less common. 

“There’s a lot of help in place for first-time buyers. You’ve got Help to Buy and you’ve got the benefits of a first mortgage, (as well as) the stamp duty situation,” he told Mortgage Introducer.

By contrast, second steppers receive no benefits for moving up the ladder. “It makes it very, very difficult for them to do so, especially while interest rates and the cost-of-living are rising.”

Nonetheless he believed house prices have now levelled out, although they would remain strong because “we have a real problem with supply, and demand is considerably higher”.

And as is often the case, talk of affordability and prices invariably give way to the wider issues of supply and planning, both of which are close to his heart.

“One of the problems is the fact that the government’s building and planning scenario means that the majority of houses are being built not where people want to live, but in a field,” he said.

Read more: Home building requires radical rethink in UK, says housing expert

He also blamed an “antiquated” planning system and “anti-development” planning officers for the woeful lack of homes being built across the country.

A major shift in attitude was needed to break the planning deadlock, given that the government had all but given up on building the 340,000 or so homes which are needed every year.

“Most people don’t want something built in their backyard, even if they’re pro-development, so it’s very difficult to say that you want to provide more housing so that house prices don’t continue to rise because demand continues to majorly outweigh supply, but they are not addressing that in any way, shape or form,” he said. “They’ve shied away from it.”

Courage is a quality sorely lacking when it comes to drafting planning laws, according to Gerrard. “If every planning decision has to be made with the approval of local residents, I can assure you that other than putting a fence up or doing a small extension that no-one can see, no planning decisions will be able to progress to provide housing,” he added.

Stamp duty has become another hotly debated issue of late, especially after the COVID-led ‘holidays’, which ended last October, proved to be so effective in getting the housing market moving again.

And according to 41% of people polled in a recent survey by the Yorkshire Building Society, one way of fixing the housing crisis would be for the government to scrap stamp duty altogether. Gerrard, however, disagreed.

“If you scrap stamp duty you cut off an enormous income stream to the government. That just isn’t feasible. What the government should be looking at is reversing stamp duty,” he suggested.

His proposal would be to pay stamp duty only on the properties that are sold, because in his view the current system unfairly penalizes people who want to move up.

But he confessed that he didn’t hold out much hope that the government had the wherewithal to make such things happen.

“I have a real problem with this existing government because the number of promises they’ve made, including about reforming the planning system, gives me very little confidence,” he said.

Given his frustration with red-tape and the current inertia by the authorities, he was asked how his experience had helped him to weather previous crisis. 

“A lot of the time it’s a case of tenacity,” he said. “Sometimes it’s important to strap yourself to the mast and just ride through that wave, because if you look over the last 50 years there are cycles in the housing market. We have a growing population, and we have a shortage of homes. And on that basis, the property market will always increase.”