Market Comment – November 2021

I wanted to finish my market comment for 2021 on a high and recent reports have made that easy for me to do, showing that the average house prices in the United Kingdom has hit a new high of £272,992 according to the Halifax.

Prices increased by 1% month on month in November, while quarterly house inflation is now at its strongest since late 2006, at 3.4%.

I concur with a number of commentators that the performance of the housing market continues to be underpinned and governed by the shortage of property available and coming to the market and of course, coupled with mortgage providers keeping rates close to historic lows.

The average house price in London is £521,129 and London continues to lead the way with expensive properties.

Looking back on previous Novembers, it looks as if we registered as many prospective purchasers in November as we did in November 2007 and this underpins that the appetite to purchase remains very strong.

We launched two developments in November, Button House in Everton Road, Addiscombe, which 100% sold out straight away and Finley Court, Foxley Lane, Purely, which we have reserved 85% and I hope by the end of this week, this will also be 100% reserved.

The governments help to buy scheme continues to be a great driver and in my opinion, a brilliant incentive to help people get on the property ladder.

Turning to residential lettings, November also experienced a spike in prospective tenants in the middle weekend, which was up 16% on November 2020. As I have mentioned many times, the amount of properties coming to the market for letting as apposed to prospective tenants is out weighted by about 7/8 prospective tenants for every prospective property to let.  November also saw a small increase on rents achieved with the same property type compared with November 2020, with an increase of 3%.

So to finish the year, the appetite for second hand housing stock, new homes and the residential lettings market can only be described as very healthy and I anticipate that this healthy demand will continue in to 2022.

Which only leaves me to wish all current, past and new customers a very healthy, happy Christmas and a happy new year. I look forward to reporting to you early 2022.