Results Matter! Even in a difficult market.

It has been an interesting time in the property market in the last few months. Following the mini budget and interest rate rises we did see some buyers changing their mind about buying. We aren’t, however, seeing every chain collapsing and the sales pipeline dropping to nothing. A lot of the people who have sales underway committed to moving months ago and if they had submitted a mortgage application would be buying at lower interest rates.  

We still have new buyers registering and applying for mortgages, based on our figures I can see there is a slight drop in sales when we compare to October 2021, the interesting thing is that the level of sales is higher than in 2018. The number of properties exchanging this October is higher than last year and our sales pipeline has 65% more properties under offer than we had when we went into the first covid lockdown. 

Over the spring and summer, we had started to see a cooling down on the feverish market we had been experiencing for the last couple of years.  New properties coming onto the market were still attracting interest and offers but not the same flood of calls as we would receive last year when any property came on the market.  

We are talking to sellers about repricing where their property is not attracting as much interest as we would like. Shifting from a seller to a buyer’s market means we will need to work with sellers to help their house stand out- curb appeal does matter, making properties attractive to buyers will be increasingly important and that is where feedback from viewers is key.  

The million-pound question everyone wants to know, is now a suitable time to buy or sell, in all honesty I don’t know. Interest rates had been unbelievably low for a long time and now they are heading to more ‘normal’ levels I don’t expect them to drop significantly. In many instances in the North East where our branch network is based, it is still cheaper to buy than it is to rent.  

People move home/ buy and sell properties for a variety of different reasons, and in the upcoming weeks and months, the market will be driven by those who ‘need’ to buy or sell, as those who would ‘like’ to buy or sell will likely sit back and wait for the dust to settle.