Despite the economic challenges and headwinds of the economy, the British property market bounced back from its usual August Bank Holiday dip with vigour regarding listings and sales.

In a nutshell, the UK Property Market YTD is running at 90.5% of the 2017/8/9 average regarding net sales, a level every estate agent in the country would have taken at the start of the year.

This week’s special guest is Ben Madden.

These are the key statistics and scores on the doors of the past week’s UK property market (Monday, September 4th to Sunday, September 10th, 2023):

·      New Properties to the Market (Listings): The number of listings bounced back from last weeks 26,778 to 34,006. The 2023 YTD running weekly average stands strong at 32,651.

·      Average Listing Price: The average listing price jumped significantly for the second week to £472,907. Throughout the Summer it has been drifting slowly downwards from the £450k’s to the early £400k’s. As explained in the show, we don’t know if this is a blip or a trend of more expensive houses coming in the market. The 2023 running weekly average of £431,311.

·      Price Reductions: A total of 24,315 price reductions were seen last week, a big jump from last week’s 17,740 (probably because many estate agents were on holiday the week before).  The 2023 running weekly average is 19,702.

·      Average Asking Price of Properties Being Reduced: This week’s average asking price of properties being reduced jumped almost £15k to £429,004. The 2023 running weekly average of £402,325.

·      Number of Properties Sold (Gross Sales): Gross sales jumped 18.6% from last week’s gross sales figures (although they had dropped by 14.7% from the week before that). Total number of car sales in the UK last week was 20,271. For comparison, the 2023 running weekly average is 21,874 sales (stc) per week.

·      Average Asking Price of Properties Sold STC this Week: The average asking price of the properties selling last week was £357,270. The 2023 running weekly average of £358,069.

·      Sale Fall Throughs: Sale Fall Throughs jumped up slightly last week to a 29.69% sale fall thru rate (Sale fall Thru Rate % are the number Sale fall Throughs for the week expressed as a percentage of gross sales for the week).  The 2023 running weekly average is 25.43% (although don’t forget in Q4 2022 the average was North of 38%). 7 year long term average is 24.3%.

·      Net Sales This Week: Net Sales jumped by 17.35% from the week before to 14,252 (although don’t forget they did drop 14.6% the week before that because of the August Bank Holiday). The 2023 running weekly average is 16,455.

·      Net Sales Year-to-Date : Despite the challenges, the year-to-date net sales of 592k showcase despite the tough economic news, the market is only 9.5% behind the 2017/8/9 average YTD for net sales

Final thoughts, what is particularly interesting is that whilst we should look at the national figures, the regional figures, there are some towns and cities up and out the UK that are following neither the regional nor national picture. There are instances with neighbouring towns, one’s whose town’s property market is on fire and it’s a sellers market, and the other town, who has a frozen property market where its quite clearly a buyers market.

In the last 20 minutes of the show, there is the usual local focus, and this week it is on Norwich.