Search regulated estate agents at www.naea.co.uk. UK property market report for July 2011. It seems we were wrong in our assumption that the summer months would be much quieter due to the normal distraction of holidays from buying houses!
Figures for July showed that the number of house hunters registered per branch jumped to its highest level since March 2009. Up from 263 in June to 299 in July. Why? Well some independent research has shown that rather than going on holiday abroad people are thinking instead about buying a property given that prices have come down a bit and there is more stock available. Its encouraging therefore to see that people therefore are still out there wanting to move.
Our research shows however that the number of sales per branch dropped from 9 per branch in June to 7 per branch in July. Its important to bear in mind however that there is typically a time lag between people looking to buy property and actually making a purchase. It will be interesting to see if the sales go up in August!
The percentage of first time buyers has generally accounted for anywhere between 21% and 25% of all sales for quite some time now. Despite struggling to get mortgages and to put deposits together its encouraging to see that first time buyers are still out there.
Number of properties available per office per branch has fallen slightly since last month but is still at a higher level than this time last year.
There seems to be plenty of people wanting to buy a property, quite a few properties available and first time buyers managing to get a deposit together to make a purchase. Things aren't quite so desperate as you may think and it will be interesting to see how the property market is affected when people get back from their holidays.