Sellers rushed to list their properties last month ahead of the summer slowdown but it made little difference to sales, agents claim.

The latest NAEA Propertymark Housing Report found that the number of properties available to buy increased by 12% in May, with 37 homes available per branch compared with 33 in April.

However, this is down from the 40 per branch this time last year.

A decade ago there were 97 properties on sale per member branch, NAEA Propertymark said.

This doesn’t seem to have made a difference to sales, though, with the number of deals per branch standing at eight for the fourth month running, and for the second month in a row, 24% of these were made to first-time-buyers.

Year-on-year, the number of sales agreed is down from ten per branch in May 2017, while the percentage of those which were made to first-time buyers is also down from 26% last year.

Agents did report an increase in prospective buyers signing up, from 337 in April to 351 in May. This is slightly up from the 350 registered in May 2017.