Market Comment – August 2016

July has proved a positive month because my staff and I have remained positive, sometimes battling against the gloomongers and experts who can only talk of nothing else but a slowdown.

We remain extremely positive at Streets Ahead and I have spoken to other leading independent estate agents both in south east London and around the country who have echoed our sentiments in that as long as we are advising vendors correctly and asking prices are not pitched too high which we believe would be counterproductive, buyer demand has remained constant over the last 3 months.

The Bank of England has already met in July and the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has decided to keep interest rates at 0.5%, however a cut of 0.25% is widely expected early in August and whilst this is pure speculation, this gives even more confidence for buyers to snap up fantastic mortgage deals from HSBC’s 0.99% fixed for 2 years or a 10 year fixed as low as 2.39% and it is my opinion as long as these fantastic mortgage deals are available, the demand for home ownership will overcome most and any uncertainties.

We concur the sentiment of our industries governing body, The National Association of Estate Agents that instantly following the Brexit result there was a very small drop in demand, however this levelled out in the rest of July and I am looking forward to remaining positive during August. Interestingly enough, July remained our second best month for new instructions to the market in 2016 and this is a clear indication that people want to move.

Turning to the new homes of which I thought there might be a stumble as we have many investor’s both locally, nationally and internationally and also as it is a less emotive purchase, I am pleased that we maintained our stock and sales levels as many investors are still seeing a better return on their money than other savings returns and most investors take the medium/long term view as opposed to the short term gain.

The lettings market across our group was fairly static with a 2% increase in new prospective tenants registering and a 4% increase in new lettings properties coming to the market.

Whilst many of you will be looking forward to your annual holiday in August, both my team and I are looking forward to a solid and positive sales and lettings month and I look forward to reporting to you at the end of August.