The housing market has a case of the January blues

The UK housing market has started the new year off in a similar fashion to the closing stages of 2017, according to the January 2018 RICS UK Residential Market Survey.

Survey in brief

Enquiries, sales and instructions remain negative Prices edge higher at the national level but continue to decline in some parts of the country More expensive tiers of the housing market still experiencing tougher conditions

In January, new buyer enquiries, instructions and sales all continued to drift lower, while the three-month expectations for agreed sales points to a flat picture in the coming months. Having said that, there is more optimism regarding the 12-month sales projections which are now modestly positive in virtually all parts of the country. This optimism is also visible in the accompanying comments from contributors to the survey.

For a 10th month in succession nationally in January, new buyer enquiries across the UK declined with 11 per cent more respondents reporting a fall rather than rise. Similarly, newly agreed sales also slipped, extending the run of negative readings back to last February. In the future, a relatively stable sales trend is expected to emerge in the near term, while respondents envisage sales picking-up over the next 12 months as a whole.

There is, however, no sign of an upturn in the flow of properties coming to the market in the UK, and with 17 per cent more respondents seeing a further decline in new instructions, the January figure was the weakest since May 2017. Significantly, the pipeline for instructions does also not appear to be improving, with 10 per cent more respondents across the UK as a whole noting the number of valuations undertaken was below the figure for the equivalent period last year.