Landlords stole the limelight in the past week as new enquiry levels for property management and tenant services plummeted 31% on the week leaving them at levels last seen in the depths of lockdown on 12 April and a huge 25% below the same week in 2019, the latest Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) showed.

Vendors and buyers remained buoyant on the surface, each ending at 21% higher than the same week last year, but with a long-term downward adjustment well underway they settled at levels last seen on 17 May and 3 May, respectively. Web traffic followed suit, dropping 14% on the week but 22% higher than the same week last year, data up to midnight 8 November showed.

Enquiries from tenants seeking new rental properties bucked the trends, rising 12% on the week to their highest level in four weeks, and 23% above the same week in 2019, but indications suggested demand is more focused on single or family occupancy and not on shared households.

Yomdel provides 24/7 managed live chat services to 3,800 estate agent offices in the UK, handling more than a 1.5m chats per year. It has analysed the data and leads captured in live chat going back to January 2019, up until week ending 8 November 2020. The website visitor data is a sample across major estate agency groups in the UK and covers in excess of 43 million unique website visits back to January 2019.

“It’s a really confused picture out there right now. Sales progression backlogs suggest up to half of sales agreed before the end of October are at risk of not being able to complete before the stamp duty holiday expires on 31^st March, while the slump in landlords reflects how agents are telling us Covid fears are making it much harder to let out shared or multi-occupancy households,” said Andy Soloman, Yomdel founder & CEO.

“Estate agents in England are able to continue working under the latest England lockdown, and demand is very much there, but the shifting sands of differing coronavirus restrictions across the United Kingdom make it very difficult to forecast future trends. It does, however, appear that new enquiry levels are gradually settling towards levels normally seen at this time of year,” 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 fell 7.36%, or 8.42 points, to end the week on 105.94, which left them 6% above the pre-covid-19 62-week average and at their lowest level since 17 May. However, they remained 21% higher than the same week in 2019.

Buyers dipped 2.00%, or 2.15 points, to close at 105.11, their lowest level since 3 May in the depths of the first lockdown. However, they remained 21% above the same week 2019 to indicate stronger demand than normal at this time of year.

Landlords slumped a huge 31.23%, or 34.32 points, to finish at 75.59, some 24% below the pre-covid-19 62-week average and 23% lower than the same week in 2019.

Tenants recovered, rising 11.51%, or 10.32 points, to close at 101.88, some 2% below the pre-covid-19 average and a strong 23% higher than the same week last year.

The following graph looks at the relationship between website visitor volumes, live chat volumes and the volume of leads generated. The data samples over 43 million visitors to estate agent websites from Jan 2019 – 8 November and shows how web traffic to estate agents’ websites (blue line) is 22% higher than the same week last year. The volume of people using live chat (red line) and the numbers of new business leads captured (purple line) are 26% and 21%, respectively, above the same week 2019.