Homes sold in just a week up by 125% in 12 months

The number of homes sold within a week of hitting the market has reached the highest in a decade as buyers rush to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday.

The Chancellor’s decision to scrap the levy on properties worth up to £500,000 has helped to fire up the housing market, according to Rightmove.

It analysed more than 200,000 properties advertised on its website that sold between July 8 – when Rishi Sunak announced the stamp duty holiday – and August 31.

One in seven were snapped up within a week of being put on the

Yesterday’s Daily Mail market. This compares with one in ten in the same time last year.

It means the number of properties sold within a week has risen by 125 per cent over the last year.

These booming figures come hard on the heels of Nationwide revealing that house prices rebounded to hit a record high in August. The average property cost £224,123 last month – £8,000 more than in June and the largest rise in 16 years.

Rightmove’s Miles Shipside said: ‘Not only are more properties selling in the current market than at any time over the past ten years, but many sellers are finding that demand for homes following lockdown and the rush to beat the stamp duty deadline means they’re achieving a quicker sale.’

Larger family homes have sold quicker than small flats. One in five (19 per cent) three-bedroom semidetached homes sold in under a week, up from 13 per cent last year.

But four- bedroom detached houses saw the biggest jump, with the proportion selling within a week doubling from 7 per cent last year to 14 per cent this year.

In contrast, around one in ten (11 per cent) one and two-bedroom flats sold within a week.

Rightmove said the ‘hottest’ market is Scotland, where the government has introduced its own version of the stamp duty holiday. A third (32 per cent) of three-bedroom semi-detached homes sold by an agent took less than a week to sell compared to 20 per cent in 2019.

The slowest market was London where one in nine homes sold within a week, although this is up from one in 20 in 2019.

But estate agents and economists have warned the housing market’s recovery could be short lived if the closure of the Government’s Job Retention Scheme for furloughed workers at the end of October leads to soaring unemployment.