NAEA reports record highs
- 10% of properties sold for more than the original asking price and 60% sold for under
- An average of 13 sales were agreed per branch in July, the highest figure recorded since June 2007
- Number of house hunters per estate agent branch rose from 379 in June to 428 in July
The NAEA CEO Mark Hayward states, "we expect the housing market to remain busy throughout the rest of the summer."
What is happening to the first time buyers?
Whilst in July we saw a fall in first time buyers our opinion is that they are making way to second home movers looking to take advantage of the £15,000 SDLT saving on offer until the 31st March 2021. What this will do is increase the average house price in the England and Wales as there will be more family home transactions that have a higher house price compared to the average FTB property price.
Still no New Build Data
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government Live tables on house building of new build dwellings haven't been updated since the 26th March 2020. With 2 quarters of data not yet showing we can only speculate that lock down has had a material effect on the number of new build developments. How few have been built we won't know until new data is released.
In 2019 there were 178,790 new builds completed. However with Help to Buy pulling funding for 2021 will we see the same levels?
What are the risks of a second lockdown?
This is the burning question because many professionals are concerned that the housing market will be placed in lockdown again this Winter. The recent change to limit large gatherings of more than 6 people on Monday 14th September will only fuel these concerns.
What no one wants to see is another intervention by the Government stopping house viewings like they did in March as this place the market on freeze, something which will jeopardise many chains if it happens again this Autumn/Winter.
Andrew Boast, co-founder of SAM Conveyancing, said:
"It is very exciting to see the housing market continuing to grow after the shock of being frozen. It is great to see second home movers coming back to the housing market. The burning questions though are, how long can the market continue to grow at this rate and do you look to aggressively grow or consolidate? With the stamp duty holiday set to end at the end of March the housing market has another 7 months of this to enjoy / cope with!"
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