UK House Prices Rise by 1.5% in Autumn

During August and September 2020 data recorded showed that house prices had risen by 1.5% when compared to the same period in 2019, according to Property Price Advice. This research suggests that there is renewed confidence in the residential property sales market following the relaxation of lockdown rules and measures. The data they have recorded is based upon statistical captures of the business’s website traffic and the activities of those site visitors applied to an algorithm to then produce forecasts relevant to the residential property sales market.

It would be fair to reflect that despite the average house price increasing, the market is not as buoyant as this time last year, backed up by looking at completed sales in August and September compared to the same period in 2019 expected to be 25% less in terms of traffic. If you consider London as an example, the fall is expected to be 34%. Voice and founder for Property Price Advice, Peter Sherrard comments that “in recent weeks the number of requests for valuations by home movers on www.propertypriceadvice.co.uk has been running at a rate well above what we have seen in recent years. Levels of interest in moving home are around 40% higher than trend. The market is bottoming out and returning to growth as lockdown measures have eased”. 

“We expect average home prices to rise in August and September to around 1.5% ahead of where they were in the same months last year, bringing them to just shy of the £254,000 mark in August and marginally over £254,000 in September”.

“Transaction levels are comprehensively below that of a year ago although this downward trend, which started well before the covid outbreak, has been arrested. Although the number of homes-moves will bounce around unpredictably as lockdown restrictions loosen, the underlying level of activity is on a gentle upward trajectory through August and September” Another leading source at the Property Price Advice who advises on economics, Mark Pragnell suggested that “with plans for so many family holidays being aborted and continued uncertainties over when and where to travel, this is not just the summer of staycations but also a time when many homeowners and buyers are considering their next move”.

“It is, though, unclear how long an increasingly buoyant market will last. The real test will come in the autumn when the reopening of schools and the potential for a second wave of the virus coincides with the impact of the unwinding of the furlough scheme on redundancies and business failures. ”We will be looking closely at our data, which will provide one of the earliest indicators of any change in market sentiment.”