The housing market shows lots to be cheerful about - but we must start building homes, says property expert Jonathan Rolande
The property market is strong
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Whenever a general election is called there is never a shortage of experts lining up to warn of the negative impact it will have on the housing market.
It’s true that general elections have, in the past, caused a sense of nervousness.
But - generally - the reality is it has very, very little impact at all.
I’ve certainly not seen any evidence in recent weeks of buyers or sellers looking to pause deals while they wait to see who is Number 10.
An expert explains how new homes are needed
PAAnd, as the housing market becomes more and more competitive, the impact of elections is likely to become less and less.
The situation was exemplified this week by an interesting new set of figures that were released by Rightmove.
It concluded that asking prices for homes coming to the market remained pretty flat this month. It was business as usual effectively.
According to the property portal, the average asking price was £375,110 for a property put on sale between 12 May and 8 June. That’s down just £21 from a month earlier.
Less expensive and more northerly regions recorded stronger price growth this month, with five of the six cheapest regions reaching new price records while the higher-priced East of England and London lagged behind.
But when you dig deeper into the stats there are lots of reasons to be cheerful. The average asking price for a UK home remained near its record high in June.
It also found agreed sales were up by six per cent year-on-year and demand from buyers was up by five per cent.
Plus a survey of 14,000 people by the website saw 95 per cent of those who were planning to move home reveal that the imminent general election would not change their plans.
Rightmove said the only area in which it had detected some possible caution among would-be sellers was at the discretionary top end of the market.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Jonathan Rolande shares his expertise JONATHAN ROLANDEIn the two weeks following the surprise election announcement, the number of top-end sellers coming to market was three per cent lower than a year ago, while in the previous two-week period it had been 11 per cent higher than in 2023.
So market activity has remained largely steady. Confidence is there and demand remains high. If I was leaving a note for the person about to move into Number 10 it would only be five words long. And it would say this: “Start building new homes. Please.”
Jonathan Rolande is a property expert from the National Association of Property Buyers