Find UK estate agents at www.naea.co.uk. The housing market report for February 2012.
You may recall from the last video that the previous couple of months had seen quite an unusual increase in first time buyers looking for properties. As suggested, this could well be first time buyers were out there trying to find a property and making the most of stamp duty holiday which finished in the budget in March.
The first set of statistics show that the number of sales increased slightly over the two months from 6 sales to 7 sales per branch. The average sales last year was 8 but it looks as though we are going in the direction and there are still people out there looking and buying property.
The next graph shows the percentage of first time buyers which looks as though it has held up at 23% consider the current market situation.
One of the areas we have constantly been concerned about is the average number of houses for sale per branch which has steadily been decreasing over the course of the year particularly the last few months but this month seems to have risen from 60 up to 63.
The final statistic is always looked at and is very interesting - the average number of house hunters out there looking to buy property has increase from 260 to 293. This is a very encouraging result and looks as though the first time buyers have had a massive influence on the outcome.
Even though the above statistics look to be going in the right direction, the Chancellor's budget which was delivered recently will not help the situation particularly for first time buyers as the stamp duty holiday was removed and at the same time he hit the other end of the market where a 7% rate will be applied to the highest priced property. So both the bottom and top end of the market we not helped with the final decision made.
Find properties for sale at www.PropertyLive.co.uk.