Are we in a Boom? | Property News September 2024
Is the UK property market experiencing a boom right now, or is the market data indicating something different? Our Managing Director, Mark, picks through the data to give you the latest property news and insights into the property market.
Welcome to this month's market update, and this time around, we're hitting you with some stats, and lots of them! Stats are useful because they help quantify what we're saying, and hopefully get across to our viewers that we're not just saying things for the sake of it! Nevertheless, it's important we don't get bogged down in the data. Yes, numbers help but they don't tell the full story, but fear not - we'll break down each stat and tell you exactly what this means for you in the current market.
Unbelievably, we're now 8 months into 2024 and as we've been saying for some time now, the activity levels are way above of the long-run average we're used to seeing. We're going to look at three key areas: the number of new listings brought to market, the number of sales agreed and finally let's look at the house price data. The first data sets are from within Manning Stainton but give a general view of how the market is performing, so let's see what the data says and most importantly, what this means to you!
The number of new properties brought to market
First off, we've excluded the data from 2020. COVID times saw radical changes to market activity and the surge coming out of the first lockdown doesn’t follow any of the normal market patterns.
The graph above shows the number of new properties brought to market each year over the last 5 years (excluding 2020). The black line represents this year and as you can see, we're tracking way ahead of the previous four years. Volume is up 8% on last year and 21% on 2019, which was the last pre-pandemic year. Also, the average price of property being brought to market across the region currently stands at just under £290,000. This is a remarkable 33.7% growth in the average listing price since 2019 or an average increase of £74,000.
Sales data from the last 5 years in the property market
Turning to the sales data, and the graph above, again using a black line to represent this year so far, tells a similar picture. We can see that the black line of 2024 is tracking way ahead of the long-run averages of the previous 5 years with the exception of the spike in 2021 which was after lockdown number 2.
The number of sales agreed across Manning Stainton is 20% higher than a year ago and 28% higher than in 2019. The average price of sales being agreed now stands at £263,000 which is 28% higher than it was in 2019.
What does this mean for buyers and sellers?
Overall we can see that the volumes in the market are way ahead of where would normally be, so what does this mean? Are we in a boom market? Should buyers be worried about missing out if they don't act fast? Similarly, should sellers be thinking this is the time to sell? Well, the simple answer remains no. This is a market in balance and that's actually positive for both buyers and sellers. There are lots of people looking to sell, a good volume of people looking to buy, and some stable market conditions to facilitate all of that activity.
However, the market remains extremely price sensitive with sellers finding that anything pushed too far will struggle to find a buyer within the ideal 4-6 week initial selling time. We can see this in the house price data from all the major indexes published over the last week or so, shown on the graph below.
In summary
So overall, we can see that whilst prices are going up it's really not by much and certainly by no more than inflation which currently stands at 3.1%. In reality, some might argue that the real price of property if anything is falling back a touch.
Anyway, that aside, we can look ahead and say with confidence that, barring any major event, we'll have a good property market for the rest of this year and into next.
