An additional £62bn of housing sales have been agreed this year in comparison to 2019, according to Zoopla.

The property website estimates that overall sales in 2020 increased from about £238bn to £300bn in value, owed to a change in lifestyle aspirations, with more people seeking larger properties with gardens and space to work from home, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic along with, but to a lesser extent, the stamp duty holiday.

Kevin Shaw, group managing director of residential sales at Leaders Romans Group, commented: “Having to spend more time at home this year has led to many of us seeking more space, looking for gardens and separate areas to enable easier working from home or to home-school children.

“We are already seeing reduced demand for flats in city centres, while we expect the desire for properties in the suburbs to continue to grow.

“House buyers will increasingly seek homes in areas around one hour away from big cities, with good transport links, facilities and lots of green space.”

In addition to this, national house price growth is running at a three-year high of 3.9%, which is the highest rate since August 2017 and up from just 1.3% a year ago, the latest Zoopla House Price Index shows.

Fastest property price growth is being recorded in Manchester, up 5.7% over the past year, followed by Leeds, Nottingham and Liverpool all at over 5%. Affordability remains less of a barrier to house price growth in these cities in comparison to southern England where house price growth was recorded at just 2.1% in Southampton and Oxford.

The end of year market momentum is expected to support a seasonally strong start to 2021, with older, equity rich, long-time homeowners continuing to take a growing share of sales. Improved availability of higher loan-to-value mortgages for those with deposits of 10% or more are already increasing, which will support first-time buyers over the next 12 months.

Richard Donnell, director of research & insight at Zoopla, commented: “The housing market is ending 2020 strongly with more buyers looking for a home than this time last year. More sales at higher prices have boosted the value of homes selling in 2020, led by a strong rebound in southern England.

“The ‘once in a lifetime re-assessment of housing’ kick-started by the pandemic has further to run in our view and this will support demand into 2021. With a long Christmas weekend, and many households isolating in smaller groups, we expect interest in housing to be stronger than usual ahead of the traditional Boxing Day bounce when interest in housing jumps and the next tranche of would-be buyers.

“While market activity is being boosted by latent demand unlocked by the pandemic, the housing market is not immune to economic forces and rising unemployment. Economic pressures are already impacting in parts of the market, reducing the volume and share of sales in less wealthy areas, for example.

“Looking ahead to 2021 we expect house price growth to reach 5% by mid Q1 and then slow to plus 1% by the end of the year as demand starts to weaken over 2021 H2.

“The number of completed housing transactions will be buoyed by a strong Q1 with sales agreed over 2020 Q4 completing early next year. Overall, we expect the number of completed housing transactions to match 2020 levels at 1.1m.”