Summer highs for housing market

The rulebook has been rewritten as the post-lockdown miniboom accelerates rather than slows down. There is normally a seasonal slowdown in housing market activity over the summer months, as both buyers and sellers turn their attention to summer holidays, say Rightmove.

However, this year, home movers have put more property on the market and have agreed more sales than in any month for over ten years, worth a record total of over £37 billion. This is leading to monthly price increases in 10 out of 12 regions, with a record high in new seller asking prices in seven of those regions.

Prices usually fall at this time of year, as sellers try to tempt holiday distracted buyers, with the national average monthly fall for the last ten years being 1.2 per cent. While there is a slight monthly fall of 0.2 per cent, this is due to London’s more normal seasonal fall of two per cent reversing what would otherwise have been an unseasonal national rise.

Miles Shipside, Rightmove director and housing market analyst, says: “Home movers are both marketing and buying more property than we have recorded in any previous month for over 10 years, this is helping to push prices to their highest ever level in seven regions. Rather than just a release of existing pent-up demand due to the suspension of the housing market during lockdown, there is now an added layer of additional demand due to people’s changed housing priorities after the experience of lockdown.”

He adds: “This is also keeping up the momentum of the unexpected mini-boom, which is now going longer and faster. We associate this time of year with diving into the pool rather than the property market, and of sand and sun rather than bricks and mortar, but buyers have had a record £37bn monthly spending spree.”