Is the South Craven housing market beginning to slow down?
… a quick 90 second read that could save you thousands!
Whilst historically the housing market starts to slow in the middle of October, with the pent up demand brought about by the first lockdown and the stamp duty holiday being a huge motivator in people putting their house up for sale, activity remained strong throughout last month.
However, when the prospect of a new lockdown was announced the market was immediately affected.
As you can see in the graph below the last two weeks has seen fewer properties come to market in the South Craven area compared to the same time last year. Even in the weeks prior, the number of new properties was steadily decreasing, with the little spike at the end of October caused by people wanting to get their property up for sale before the pending lockdown. The decrease has continued since.
What does this mean? Well, whilst sales are currently strong they naturally are affected by the number of new properties coming to the market. With that in mind sales will undoubtedly tail off now as well.
Is it the right time for you to market your property? That depends on your circumstances. What I am advising though, which is contradictory to what a lot of other agents are saying, is not to market your property if you want to save on stamp duty for an onward purchase. There will undoubtedly be a lot of unhappy people come the 31st March when the stamp duty holiday ends. I think that a lot of the newly agreed sales will fail to get over the line in time and this could leave you severely out of pocket.
One thing you will always get from us is honest, accurate and well-informed advice. We are not here to tell you what you want to hear and will certainly not pull the wool over your eyes to make sure we got your property to sell.
If you would like to have a chat about the market then please give me a call.
Thanks for reading
Michael
