A smile, bluster and vague soundbites will not solve the UK housing crisis
Thought Leadership by Andrew Stanton – CEO Proptech-PR
‘I have been involved in the UK property industry since the mid 1980’s and have an extremely well-informed understanding of new home delivery, not least that it takes five years from wanting to build a new property asset to it being built. So, when the Labour government said they would increase the rate of delivery by 50% I was of course sceptical.
After two years Labour has only delivered 62% of the houses promised and needs to deliver 400,000 new homes a year every year over the next 36 months to hit their 1.5M target. Which brings us on to the person driving or not driving the policies that will enable this – the once sacked and now re-engaged Housing secretary Angela Rayner.
Apart from of course having no formal education, Ms Rayner has not exactly covered herself in glory with regard to property matters, her tax evasion of £40,000 of SDLT is well publicised, as is her vagueness with regard to whether she lived at or rented her former council house, which she bought at a discount and then sold. Then as Housing minister closing the loophole so that others living in social housing now have to wait years longer than she and her ex-husband had to, to be able to buy at a discount.
I could dig a little deeper into the still unresolved matter at land registry where the ‘trust’ matter that sits around her appropriation of funds from her son’s fund is still in abeyance as the matter does not seem to be at arm’s length, but I think the real problem with Ms Rayner being the ‘brains’ behind getting 400,000 new homes built every twelve months – is not only is it impossible but a far-left socialist idealogue is the last thing that will help get the problem resolved. A panel of experts just might.
I have seen firsthand being in the audience at Propertymark One earlier this year, that unlike former Housing secretary’s like Michael Gove for example who was all over the brief and knew all the detail ensuring he had overview of all the facts and numbers, Ange relies on a smile and bluster and vague soundbites, usually falling back into telling a tale about her working-class roots, being a young mum with no qualifications and living on a council estate with ‘orange hair.’
Now this type of rhetoric might go down well with a Unison trade union conference, but it was not reading the room when you have an audience of the top property 1,200 property professionals in the UK, who all paid good money to hear the shape of labour’s policy around housing especially new home delivery.
As a point of balance listening to Ange on stage, I did feel a personal warmth and I was impressed by her ability to talk, but there are probably lots of people working on a Tesco checkout who could do the same thing – but I would not want them to be the one pushing through or rather failing to push through the delivery of 400,000 new homes a year. And here is the problem – within the Labour cabinet there is only the tiniest veneer of knowledge and certainly zero strategy.
Whenever Ms Rayner is put in front of a microphone the huge chasm between the job that needs sorting – housing – and her lack of grip on the brief comes into focus, like a huge boulder hurtling towards the unfortunate Wile E. Coyote cartoon character about to be crushed as he is unable to escape the inevitable impact caused by the Road Runner.
Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR
Fine & Country Phuket Property Networking Event in Mayfair Monday 24 August 2026
Fine & Country is set to bring insights into Phuket’s luxury property market to London this month, hosting an exclusive Discover Phuket Property Networking Event at its Mayfair headquarters on Monday 24 August 2026, from 4pm to 7pm.
The event will bring together international buyers, investors and property professionals for an evening of presentations, discussion and networking, offering guests the opportunity to learn more about Phuket’s evolving luxury residential market, and meet the team behind the recently launched Fine & Country Phuket licence.
The event comes shortly after Fine & Country launched its Phuket licence, which is operated by a locally based team with experience in luxury residential property and development with Zero Developments, the award-winning developer behind The Zero Bang Tao and Silhouette by The Zero in Nai Yang.
Fine & Country Phuket launched with a portfolio of more than 30 luxury properties, spanning private villas, branded residences, boutique developments and premium condominiums. The portfolio is designed to appeal to a diverse international audience.
Tony Bygraves, CEO of The Zero Phuket, said: “Bringing Phuket’s property market to London gives us the opportunity to speak directly with buyers who are actively exploring their next move, whether that is a permanent relocation, a second home or an investment in one of Asia’s leading lifestyle destinations.
“An event like this is particularly valuable because property in Phuket is about much more than the individual asset. Buyers want to understand the location, the lifestyle, the development landscape and the opportunities available to them. Being able to have those conversations in person allows us to provide a much more informed perspective on the market.”
The changing profile of Phuket’s property market is helping to position the island beyond its traditional reputation as a second-home and seasonal tourism destination. Increasing numbers of affluent international buyers are considering Phuket for relocation, retirement, lifestyle-led investment and longer-term property diversification.
Nicky Stevenson, Managing Director of Fine & Country, said: “The event gives our London audience the opportunity to meet the people on the ground and gain a clearer understanding of what makes the island such an attractive proposition for international buyers.
“Events like this are an important part of how we connect our international network with the local expertise behind each of our markets. We are looking forward to bringing together buyers, investors and property professionals for an evening of discussion and networking.”
For attendees, the event will provide an opportunity to gain first-hand insight into the purchasing process and understand the considerations involved in acquiring property in Thailand, while learning more about the range of opportunities available across Phuket.
Bygraves (Picture above) said: “International buyers are becoming increasingly discerning about where and how they invest in property. In Phuket, we are seeing strong interest in developments that offer not only high-quality design, but also a compelling location, strong amenities and the potential to deliver an exceptional lifestyle.
Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR
The next property management interface may not look like software at all
Thought Leadership (Pictured) by Fredérick Wakim, Founder of ImmoAdmin
“For most of the software era, making a property management platform better meant adding something to it. Another dashboard. Another report. Another filter. Another workflow. Another integration. The logic made sense. Property management is complicated, so the software became complicated too. But I think we are approaching a point where that relationship starts to reverse.
The next generation of property software may not win because it gives users more screens. It may win because users need to visit fewer of them. That is a quite different idea from simply adding an AI chatbot to an existing SaaS product.
We built software around navigation
Think about how a property manager completes a relatively ordinary task today. A tenant has not paid. The manager opens the rent module, finds the tenant, checks the balance, looks at previous payments, possibly opens the communication history, prepares a reminder, sends it, then records or follows up on what happened.
None of those steps is especially difficult. The inefficiency comes from the human having to understand where every piece of information lives and how every part of the software is supposed to be operated.
For years, that has simply been accepted as the interface between people and business software. You learn the system. AI potentially flips that relationship. The system starts learning how the work is done.
A chatbot beside the software is not the same thing
There is an important distinction here. putting a conversational box inside a property management product does not automatically make the product intelligent.
If the AI can explain how to create a lease but the user still has to leave the conversation, find the leasing module and create it manually, extraordinarily little has changed. The much more interesting model appears when the AI is connected to the underlying application itself.
A manager should be able to ask which tenants are behind on rent, understand the answer, then instruct the same system to prepare the appropriate follow-up. It should already understand which building, lease, tenant and transaction are being discussed.
That requires far more than a language model. It requires structured data, permissions, business rules, workflows, and a system capable of actually carrying out the resulting action.
This is the distinction we have been working through while building ImmoAdmin.
The platform itself handles operational areas such as leases, rent, accounting, maintenance, documents, and communications. Its AI assistant sits inside that environment rather than beside it.
It can work with the context already present in the system and help users move through real operational tasks, while sensitive actions remain subject to user confirmation. That last part matters more than it might seem.
Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR
