It feels like a lifetime ago that we were talking about President Trump’s response to the pandemic and his economic stimulus plan.
It would be fair to say that quite a bit has happened since the end of last year and the subsequent time in between, which included the US presidential election, the end of 2020, President Biden’s inauguration and the vast improvement in the state of the Coronavirus pandemic.
One of the biggest developments across that time, of course, is the approval and rollout of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccines are now going a large way towards improving the situation across many countries, but there is a long way to go until the entire world has been vaccinated.
One of the central planks of Biden’s election campaign was that he would get the Coronavirus pandemic under control in the US and would deliver 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office, as well as protecting the economy and helping it to bounce back.
On his economic promise, Biden promoted his ‘American rescue plan’ which pledged over $1 trillion in direct economic relief payments for citizens. It’s one of the most ambitious economic plans in American history, putting money directly into Americans’ pockets and stabilising the economy in the meantime.
In the last few days, Biden’s Coronavirus relief plan was passed by the Senate and has been sent to his desk for him to sign off on and implement, so what does it involve, and will it go some way to stabilising both the world and UK economies?
UK Recovery
The US has been recovering largely quite well, which puts them in line with the UK as competing for the fastest recovery of the G7 economies.
As reported recently by the BBC, as the economy continues to emerge from pandemic and restrictions are lifted, spending has begun to rise and retail sales have been recovering swiftly. Sales rose by an impressive 2.1% in February, evidence of this gradual economic upturn.
Similarly, the BBC also reported that firms which had been planning redundancies in February fell sharply compared to last year, indicating that firms in the UK are expecting a better economic performance than originally anticipated.
UK Property
The UK property market has been absolutely booming recently, and if the US reaction to Biden’s stimulus is anything to go by then we can expect the wider UK economy to follow suit and potentially boost property even further.
With the recent budget announcement by the chancellor Rishi Sunak that he will be extending the stamp duty holiday. This extension is set to result in a prosperous 6 months for UK property investors, offering a perfect time to increase your portfolio.
There has also been a marked increase in the number of investors planning to plough their cash into more UK property, with many planning to splurge in June or beyond once all restrictions have been lifted.
It’s expected that this will lead to potentially sharp price increases, so it follows that we’d advise you to bring your investment plans forward whilst you’re still able to make the most of stamp duty cuts and lower prices, before there’s a large influx of investment in the summer.