Kate Faulkner OBE is one of the UK’s leading property experts. She is passionate that most of the problems in the residential property market can be solved if the media, industry and government worked together to educate consumers on how to carry out property projects. To aid this, Kate has set up a free consumer education site Propertychecklists and working groups for Home Buying and Selling and The Lettings Industry Council which are attended by DLUHC.
Kate regularly features on BBC TV and radio including You and Yours and Moneybox. She has also appeared on ITV’s This Morning and co-hosted LBC’s Property Hour. Kate works closely with journalists all over the country to help ensure their work is accurate and up to date. This is not easy when housing policies differ between Scotland, NI, Wales and England. See Kate’s latest media.
Kate earns her money by working with lenders, brokers, insurance and legal companies, agents, surveyors and the removal industry. This is on a strategic and communication basis, primarily to help companies better engage with consumers.
She is regularly asked to present seminars, keynote speeches and to host conferences and panels within the property sector.
To ensure Kate gives best advice to consumers, the industry, media and Government, she analyses what’s happening in the economy, property prices and rents, and the impact this has.
Kate’s business provides consumers with independent up to date advice on how to buy, sell, rent, invest, renovate, maintain or build a property. She does this via a free service called Propertychecklists.
The consumer site is supported by forward thinking companies and organisations, such as Belvoir, Habito, Reeds Rains, Your Move, Barratt Homes, Direct Line, Big Yellow, Landlord Action, Chase de Vere and Tenancy Deposit Scheme.
Industry Experience/Reports
TDS Reports
Independent PRS Report
Housing Policy Expert
Future Homes Commission
Self Build & Renovation Centre
Property Author
Kate has written 11 property books including four for the consumer organisation Which? – Buy, Sell and Move House; Renting and Letting; Develop your Property and Property Investment Handbook.
BBC Presenter
She has also presented a feature on Housing Solutions to our property crisis for BBC’s Inside Out
Media Interviews
BBC1 Breakfast News GMTV
BBC2 Your Money ITV/ITN
Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Show Channel 4
Radio 5Live LBC Radio
Radio 4 You and Yours The Telegraph
Radio Nottingham The Times
Daily Mail Daily Express
Which? Moneywise
Fake Britain
Qualifications
BSc (Econ)
MBA
DipM
CIM
Kate Faulkner OBE 
Hi
I saw you comments on BBC News, re the government New buy scheme.
What needs to be done to assist with house purchases is legislation. There are no laws that protect the consumer when buying a house. Mainly new, it causes developers to cut corners and promise the earth but when you pay they change their attitude.
Hi Lewes, thanks for commenting. I agree there is little to protect buyers, although there is much they could do themselves – simply making sure they have a survey or snagging survey at least should protect them from poorly built properties. You might be interested in the Future Homes Commission I was involved with last year as this tackles exactly the issues you raise. Here is a link: http://www.architecture.com/HomeWise/News/FutureHomesCommision.aspx
Kate,.
I watched your piece on BBC Breakfast today about the new “Housing Bubble”. Thank God (and you) that you stayed entirely professional and were not tempted to follow the theme of their piece but rather, to actually disagree and effectively say: “Bubble..what bubble?,…lets have a recovery first!” I was most impressed with your professionalism and grasp of the situation and moreover your determination not to follow a clearly planned theme by the BBC to spook us all about the housing market again!! We in then industry have suffered enough! Thank you on behalf of hard working Developers everywhere.
Tom Butler
Scope Property.
Hi Tom, thanks for your kind comments. My aim is always to try and make sure the general public get the right information about what’s happening market wise, as opposed to companies or organisations might like to press release! Glad you liked the interview and just so you are aware, we do a free price and rental update every month, which you can either sign up to or view here – https://katefaulkner.wordpress.com/property-prices-2/
Kate Faulkner
Something that has always puzzled me with housing association houses and council houses (what is left of them) and wondered if you can solve it for me. There is a shortage of these type of houses, but are exisitng tenants ever re-assessed on their status/earnings? I know of two families who live in these types of houses, both now earn a good salary and one even owns properties that they rent out – surely this is not right?
Hi Anne, you are right in that it does appear many people who have gone into social housing in the past were given not just tenancies for life, but my understanding, is their children were also allowed to take up the tenancies. This practice is in the process of being changed, so many tenancies are being granted on a fixed term basis, for example, five years. So although it will take some time to filter through the system, in the future, tenancies for their families and their bloodline won’t be granted for exactly the reasons you highlight. What I find most shocking is the tens of thousands of council homes which have actually been rented out in the private sector by the people they were given to in the first place. Again, this practice is in the process of being withdrawn.
Would be interesting to hear your perspective about money creation, the money supply, risk asset allocation and its relationship to house prices such as discussed by Positive Money and the NEF.
Hi Nick, thanks for getting in touch. We help consumers with their day to day housing needs and projects, so although I fully appreciate your view on housing bubbles caused by debt I do think to some extent that has already happened and that was partly what I tried to point out today. Some of the properties in Sunderland and other areas I have analysed will never recover their value, which is very different to the story people are normally fed that prices double every 10 years. That hasn’t happened in most areas since 2004/5. My aim is to provide honest information about property trends and help people use these to navigate their way through the market whether hanging a door or building a home for the first time. Although I do think there is money to be made in property, it’s a specialist skill, of which financing is one of key reasons it works – rightly or wrongly. For most people though, they just want to put a roof over their heads and we help them with that and what to do when they are in it.
thanks for the reply Kate. The reason I raise this point is that the finance system is not passive. Yes, giving advice is one thing, but ultimately the way the system is constructed today house buyers are being, I believe sometime unaware, taking a huge speculative bet for the sake of the greater good of keeping the economy growing. I liked your observation that it is not only supply and demand, but also wealth local patterns of wealth, that drive prices. But it is also what a bank is prepared to lend. I think you have done some nice research on this uncovering the jaggedness of the market. However, it raises more questions than it answers in policy. For example, help to buy. does it unnecessarily distort the market and make homes more expensive than necessary. Would caps on LTI and LTV protect the consumer from market fluctuations and volatility in price. Currently, because of the leveraged nature, people are exposed to huge risk, when, as you say, all they want to do is put a roof over their head. This makes them vulnerable to what is quite a predatory system, particularly here in the UK where the borrower is liable for the losses. Not only that, over allocation into housing capital means that capital is not invested in more productive uses to provide sustainable employment.
Hi, Kate, heard your piece on 5 Live this morning, and thought I’d drop you a line.
I find the scariest thing about the housing debate is the lack of understanding of risk, and ability and aptitude to take on new risks. The danger is that political aims contrast with the financial facts of life, especially regarding mortgage provision for the less well off. Too many examples of trying to bounce them into mortgages that bring medium/long term grief (earning ability less stable, inability to withstand negative equity). The system, as you say above, then becomes predatory.
The other political favourite I object to is the perpetual vilification of the private landlord. Most landlords, as with most tenants, are decent and honest. All parties seem to want to make political capital of this.
Were you on the scene when the Miles Report was issued on long term fixed rate mortgages?
Kind regards
Hi Peter, thanks so much for commenting. I agree with you that we are so obsessed with home ownership we don’t always think through the longer term ramifications.
With regards to vilification of private landlords, I totally agree with you. For this, we seem to be adopting a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ policy. The impact on tenants is terrible. Just because landlords sell up to a first time buyer doesn’t mean there isn’t a family on universal credit that has now been made homeless and I am fairly convinced the attack on the PRS is the cause of rising homelessness as opposed to anything the landlord is doing wrong.
With regards to the Miles Report, yes I did read this and believe it or not I was actually lucky enough to be taught by David, although I can’t claim to have anything like his intelligence. I thought the report was very useful.
I often write weekly on the property market and if this is of interest it’s all free to access via http://www.propertychecklists.co.uk.
Regards
Kate
I inherited my father’s house and the attached flat in 2013, and subsequently arranged for a tenant to go in in December 2014. However, being a novice, i didn’t know I had to have an EPC. My wife has spent numerous hours on the phone to the Local Authority, accepting responsibility and trying to find out how we can obtain this, as the tenant is refusing access due to Covid. I have also requested access to carry out an inspection to obtain a new Gas Safe Certificate.
Please can someone help me sought out this problem. I accept responsibility and will pay the relevant fine, but I don’t know who to contact. We have spoken to Trading Standards, Building Control etc but no one can help. What can I do????