Market Comment – April 2019

April turned out to be a month two spikes in that we saw a dramatic increase in sales enquiries in the second week of April, with a significant decrease in the third week which as you can imagine did equal itself in the end and new registrations were exactly where we expected them to be in line with last year and the previous month with registrations for new prospective purchasers being in excess of 450 for the group.

We were delighted that Jamie Dore, an experienced and very successful branch manager has joined us as the Purley manager, and already our Purley business has dramatically increased. We are confident and looking forward to this office going from strength to strength.

We were particularly pleased with the number of houses and flats sold from our South Norwood office, this being our newest flagship office and after analysing the figures, not only is this office number 1 in its area for lettings and sales, we are looking forward to maintaining this number 1 spot for the rest of the year.

Our Addiscombe, Croydon, South Croydon, Crystal Palace, Central Croydon and Coulsdon offices were all in line with where we expected them to be.

I was interested to see the interview given by Mark Carney, the governor of the bank of England yesterday, in that he can foresee the situation of economic growth improving slightly and that may affect interest rates and the 3 million homeowners in the United Kingdom, with variable or tracker mortgages which reminded me of the statistic that in 2008, 50% of mortgages were at fixed rates and for the final 3 months of 2018 that had increased to 90% of new mortgages at fixed rates.

I was interested to read a few articles in that the city, even with the uncertainty of Brexit does not expect interest rates to increase more than once until 2021.

It seemed more of a feel good factor with property news in April as I even think the gloom mongers have realised there is still an appetite to buy and sell and particularly in the areas we operate in and the lettings market in April remains as resilient as ever.

As exciting as ever, our new homes department has 220 units available from 1 bedroom flats to 5 bedroom houses and 143 new units being a mix of houses and flats coming to the market in the next 3 months. Traditionally now the evenings and mornings are lighter and this is an exciting time to buy and sell and rent and I look forward to reporting back to you in May.