Market Comment – August 2020

First and foremost, I trust and hope all our clients and customers are well and safe, as we all know these are very challenging times.

Even I confess in these challenging times, not only is the property market in sales, lettings and new homes bucking the trend, but demand was up so much in August is almost seems incredible. I am reliably informed that one of the major property portals that we advertise on, has seen a spike of over 265% traffic in August.

Most of us know the reasons for extra property market confidence, the obvious being the stamp duty holiday which runs till the 31st March 2021. The pent up demand from the period of lockdown is still filtering out to all sectors of the market and help to buy from the government has proved a huge success.

I can report that prices across the United Kingdom were 5.2% higher than the same month last year, thus being the strongest annual growth since 2016, (according to the Halifax), with the average price of a property in the United Kingdom being £245,747.

Turning to our figures in August, after a sluggish month with seeing existing sales through in July, with frankly having to navigate around associated services which are still working remotely which has been a challenge for our progressors, managers and both vendors and purchasers alike, we finally managed to unclog this in August and our completions on house purchases were up on the same month last year. New sales have shot through the roof as you might expect from my earlier statement and new enquiries are up 88% on the same month last year. New sales (bare in mind we were suffering from Brexit fatigue) are up 76%. I expected a spike with the stamp duty holiday and I was unsure about how much pent up demand there would be but I was told socially recently of a couple that haven’t been able to go on holiday so decided to move and I think this is typical of peoples decisions in 2020.

Most surprisingly has been our lettings results. We moved more people in August than any other month in our trading history. In this respect, first of all I would like to pay tribute to our staff and all the many clients who have been patiently participating in all the PPE equipment and rules we have strictly been adhering to whilst on viewings etc. and will be taking place for the foreseeable future both on sales and lettings and indeed new homes – I cannot see this changing. My only explanation for seeing such a spike in move ins, is the overflow of the lockdown demand and in light of not being able to go on holiday as much and it would be fair to say a lot of other normal options not available, moving home both in sales and in particular the lettings market was very very busy in August.

Our New Homes division continues to go form strength to strength with the last property at Monahan Avenue being sold, the last apartments at Selsdon Road being sold and as I write we are hoping to conclude the sales of two developments in Coulsdon and Purley.

As the months seem to be rushing by, we still have a lot of new developments to launch this year which is very exciting and please feel free to contact me directly regarding this.

I hope my comments are helpful to you and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me directly.

I look forward to reporting back to you in October.

Gary