Market Comment – February 2019

February ended up being a fairly stable month across our group, although it was a month of stop and start both in the lettings and sales market.

I was interested to read that house prices according to the nationwide building society were up 0.4% compared with a year ago, however in February house prices dipped 0.1% compared with the month before, with the average property in the United Kingdom costing £211,304. I concur with Robert Gardener from the Nationwide comments in that “indicators of the housing market of property transactions and the number of mortgages approved for house purchases has remained broadly stable in recent months”. Although this article goes on to say the confidence has weakened at the turn of the year, I believe our group of offices has not experienced this because of the areas of London in which we operate in are still outstanding value for money.

I have read a few reports which has more than suggested Brexit is clearly impacting the issue of confidence and whilst I have no doubt that our prospective purchasers cannot avoid the Brexit subject, it has hardly dampened the appetite.

Help to buy still remains very popular and in my view is it an excellent initiative by the government, enabling many prospective purchasers to own their own home.

Turning to the lettings market, we saw a slight dip in new properties coming to the market in February and conversely a slight increase in prospective tenants but frankly speaking both changes were negligible and I shall be monitoring this carefully over the coming months.

Traditionally this time of year is a good time of year for would be homeowners and movers with the latter evenings etc. and I have no reason to believe that 2019 will be any different.

I look forward to reporting back to you in early April.