Yorkshire faring well in latest market reports
There were market reports from Rightmove and Home.co.uk this week. Yorkshire featured prominently in Rightmove’s top 10 places with the biggest increase in buyer demand, which is no surprise to estate agents.
The study is based on the number of people phoning and emailing estate agents about properties for sale over the past two weeks, compared to the first two weeks in March. The average for England is an increase of 32 per cent.
Hereford, which is number one in the top 10, saw demand rise by 77 per cent, followed by Wigan at 61 per cent and Rochdale at 66 per cent.
Scarborough was in fourth place with buyer interest inflating by 62 per cent. Bradford features at number six with a rise of 59 per cent.
Rightmove also looked at the rise in demand in English cities, where Newcastle outperformed them all with a rise in buyer demand of 54 per cent, followed by Liverpool with 39 per cent and Sheffield with 31 per cent. Leeds also featured in the top table with 25 per cent.
A separate study by Rightmove of the prices of over 7,000 newlyagreed sales shows that agents selling typical “second stepper” homes with three or four bedrooms homes, excluding fourbedroom detached properties, are achieving closest to the last advertised asking price on Rightmove.
Rightmove’s property expert Miles Shipside said: “This shows that towns are bouncing back better than cities and is indicative of many prospective buyers choosing smaller areas to live, but still looking for places that will have all the facilities they need on their doorstep.
“Many of the towns in the list have cheaper prices so a buyer’s budget goes further, allowing extra space for possible home-working and gardens.”
Home.co.uk’s asking price index for June shows that the NorthWest and Yorkshire top the table for monthly and annual price growth.
They saw price rises of 1.5 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively over the past month, while the mix-adjusted average asking price for homes in England and Wales was up 0.7 per cent.
Year-on-year price growth was 3.4 per cent for the North-West and 3.2 per cent for Yorkshire. This comfortably surpassed that of monetary inflation and outperformed the national average of 0.8 per cent.
The Home.co.uk index also shows that vendors re-entering the market and are pricing higher but the bullishness is justified.
There are only around 40 per cent of the new listings expected in May amid considerable demand post-lockdown, so much so that several major lenders have temporarily withdrawn 90 per cent loan to value mortgages citing overwhelming demand.
Doug Shephard, director of Home.co.uk, says: “The UK property market began the year with a plethora of encouraging activity. The optimistic scenario would be a return to this positive trend, although demand will be tempered to some degree by a mortgage credit bottleneck and the economic damage sustained by the lockdown cannot be ignored.
“The key question remains ‘how vigorous will the rebound be?’ What is blatantly clear is that the situation could have been a whole lot worse.
“The annualised mix-adjusted average price growth across England and Wales currently stands at +0.8 per cent; in June 2019, the annualised rate of