This blog is well overdue and I should probably apologise firstly, but the honest truth is that we have been flat out helping our buyers and sellers for the last sixteen months and the team have barely had time to take a breath! This applies to everyone working within the property market, it has been very exciting, but also extremely challenging due to the significant delays through the legal process. Now don’t get me wrong, this has been fantastic for us (mostly) and I’m certainly not complaining, but this blog has had to take a back seat since the first post.

Many independent data sources have been showing 12% to 15% increases in property values during the previous twelve months and this is not isolated to the Yorkshire region. The stats have been fairly consistent across the whole of the UK, with some small pockets even going beyond these dizzy heights! To put this into perspective, during the twelve months pre-COVID, capital appreciation across the West and South Yorkshire markets was pretty solid at around 4% to 6% and this was seen as a very healthy market. The cause of such growth has basically been a perfect storm, with a huge pent up demand for homes born out of the whole country being locked up indoors (literally) for months during the previous lockdowns, combine this with some of the lowest mortgage rates ever seen AND the cherry on top of the cake, which is the stamp duty holiday period (ends on the 30th of September 2021). Many sellers delayed the decision to list their homes and the supply never really caught up to the demand.

However, we are starting to see some clear indicators that things are changing. The buyer demand is still there and is far outstripping the supply of suitable homes, but there seems to be a lot of hesitation from vendors to list their properties on the open market without having found something to buy first. Now the problem with this approach is that you are highly unlikely to secure a purchase in such a competitive market when your house is not sold (subject to contracts), never mind not even on the market. Some agencies have even been blocking viewings with buyers who are not sold subject to contract (which is not something that I agree with by the way…). With so many buyers around and so few new homes coming to market, this is keeping prices high. But with inflation now falling below double figures for the first time in a while, many are starting to hold off and wait to see if there will be a decline off the back of the stamp duty window closing. I’m out on valuations and viewings 90% of the time when at work and can both see and feel a change in the air, as well as in the figures. Things are certainly starting to slow down, but with so many transactions tied up in the legal process and many set to miss the end of the deadline this month, I think that the craziness may continue for a few more weeks yet. 

Personally, I think it’s unlikely that we will see a major crash in pricing when the stamp duty window closes too. There are enough ‘load bearing’ structures in place to hold up the market and I can see there being the usual steady slump through the colder months (November through to February) and assuming that buyer demand doesn’t dry up entirely, I expect to see plenty of activity in early March next year, if not in mid February. Prices will start to steadily rise again until the demand levels off, so if we can make it through the Christmas period without another lockdown, vendor confidence is also likely to improve and more will decide to list, thus reducing buyer demand to normal levels. So come spring time, my money is on the market being more balanced again with a little drop in prices before Christmas, but this time next year… this is much more difficult to predict so if you are thinking of making that move… now may be the time to do it.