February 2024 Market Comment

Welcome to the February 2024 Property Market Comment

This leap year February we’ll be blessed with an extra day of property marketing this year – it all helps in the quest for progress in notching up our growing number of successful property transactions.

Because, from our perspective, every sale really counts. Every sale impacts the life of at least two parties, buyer and seller, and their families, and we’re hugely mindful of the responsibility we have in our role as estate agents to make sure deals get done – so that people can move.

Part of this includes us having not only a firm handle on the tiller of a transaction, and indeed linked transactions, but also keeping a step ahead of the market itself. Our deep interest in and understanding of the market, and the micro and macro factors that influence it daily, means that we can offer advice that enables our clients to actually secure a sale, when other agents are tempted just to say what they think the client wants to hear. We don’t work like that – we give it to you straight! 

So let’s look at the current market. As we said last month, there is nothing dramatic happening, which is generally a good thing, as it leads to stability and confidence. Interest rates were held and it looks like we’re in for a gentle reduction in mortgage rates over the coming months and years. But this is probably going to be a slow burn and most people won’t want to wait that long until they move house. The biggest issue is for those people coming to the end of their cheap fixed rate deals who might suddenly have to cope with a 100% increase in their monthly mortgage payment. We suspect many of these people could  be coming to market shortly.

In fact, according to Rightmove, the number of properties coming to market is already 15% higher than this time last year, yet buyer enquiries are only 5% up. This continues to point towards a buyers’ market. Certainly sales are being done, and these are primarily from those new sellers who are quoting competitive asking prices. In fact with new seller asking prices down 0.7% on this time last year, (that’s down by over 8% when you take inflation into account) it seems that the penny has finally dropped. Those people who are serious about moving, are sensible about pricing. An overly-ambitions asking price in this market is almost certainly destined to cause problems both in terms of sale price agreed, and timing.  

But there are ways of securing the very highest price the market will pay, so if you are currently on the market, or are thinking of moving, then please do contact us and we can go through some ideas with you. The leap year – you might be pleasantly surprised!

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Richard Rawlings except as excluded under licence.