New enquiries to estate agents slowed last week,  indicating a possible cooling of the hugely overheated residential property market, the latest Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) shows.

But overall levels, with the exception of tenants, remained significantly higher than the same week last year, with new vendor enquiries some 64% up on the first week of September 2019, and buyers and landlords some 48% and 34% higher, respectively.

Traffic to own-branded estate agent websites remained exceptionally strong indicating significant changes to consumer behaviour as people shift online with visitor counts some 34% above the Covid-19 62-week average running from January 2019 up until lockdown on 23 March this year.

New sales enquiries from vendors in the week ending midnight on 13 September dipped 6% to end a significant 68% above the 62-week pre-covid-19 average to indicate continued strong demand, but importantly this was 27% off the peak hit in the week ending 19 July. Buyers fell almost 6% on the week and landlords more than 3%.

“It’s all relative and while recent weeks do show a steady slowdown in volumes of new enquiries, the market is still incredibly buoyant. We seem to be having a bit of an Indian Summer,” said Andy Soloman, Yomdel Founder & CEO.

“But be warned, coronavirus is very much a lurking danger, new government restrictions are being applied and once again the general economic outlook is extremely uncertain as we get closer to an increasingly likely no-deal Brexit,” he added.

The YPST methodology establishes a base line average shown as 100% or 100, calculated according to average engagement values over the 62 weeks prior to the lockdown, and plots movements from there according to the volumes of people engaging in live chat, their stated needs, questions asked, and new business leads generated. Data is measured over full 24-hour periods.

New vendors lost 6.15%, or 10.99 points, to end the week on 167.68, which left them 68% above the pre-covid-19 62-week average.

Buyers fell 5.56%%, or 8.78 points, to close at 149.10, some 49% above pre-covid-19 average, their lowest level since lockdown was initially eased in May.

Landlords dipped 3.37%, or 4.33 points, to finish at 123.99, around 24% above the average.

Demand from tenants fell into negative territory year-on-year falling 1.29%, or 1.75 points, to close at 133.82, some 34% above the pre-covid-19 average, but actually 4% under the same week in 2019.