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Following on from our market comment in mid-June where we said the property market had reopened and was incredibly buoyant, rather amazingly the market has continued to go from strength-to-strength in the last month.
Stags are seeing an increasing number of people registering for property and wishing to move to the West Country, whether to buy a second home or, mostly, a permanent home, from outside the region, particularly from London and the Home Counties. People are also moving within the South West either upsizing or downsizing.
Indeed, in June 2020, there were 19% more properties sold by Stags compared to the same month last year, which in itself is normally a busy month, so showing the pent-up demand and the increase in viewings led to a sharp increase in the number of actual sales agreed. With lawyers getting back to work and the wheels of conveyancing turning more quickly, the number of completions in June was 300% up on the previous month and the number of properties now in the pipeline to be completed during the rest of this summer/autumn is getting back to levels last seen in the busy time of 2019.
Owners of West Country properties have also realised that now is an excellent time to take advantage of these buoyant market conditions, with 33% more properties being listed to the market compared to June 2019. Likewise, the first few weeks of July, have been very busy for new instructions and agreed sales. Viewings, were up 17% in June, compared to June 2019, whilst viewings in early July were up 50% compared to the same period last year.
Though large numbers of buyers are already on the Stags mailing list and receiving alerts direct from our database, the number of website enquiries that we have received have gone up by an amazing 167% last month compared to the equivalent month in 2019.
Stags now have over 20,000 applicants registered on their database looking to buy all types of property and land, covering the whole of the South West peninsula, a record number since Stags first implemented a computer system over 30 years ago!
A number of Stags’ offices are reporting property being listed for sale and then agreed a sale within a week of coming to the market, if priced correctly. In a number of instances, one has had to go to competitive ‘best and final offers’, when more than one party wishes to acquire the same property. Indeed, rather sadly, gazumping is coming back into our vocabulary, which I do not think any agent would have predicted would have been the case post-Covid in 2020.
Overall, not surprisingly, Stags are delighted with the state of the market, as indeed we are sure every agent in the West Country would be, and if you are thinking of moving some time in the next 12 months, we would suggest that you contact your local agent now rather than leaving it until later in the year, or indeed next year.
Simon Cooper, Partner of Stags, is often asked “What effect is it having on prices?” and as he said last month, there are certainly few signs of house prices falling, as was predicted only a month or two ago and in certain instances one is starting to see prices edge up, compared to what one was achieving only 12 months ago.
