‘Slow and steady’ Brexit property market confirmed in TwentyCi Q3 analysis – except for first time buyers

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The latest TwentyCi Property & Homemover Report for Q3 2019 – the most comprehensive real time review of the property market - confirms a ‘slow and steady’ Brexit property market over the last quarter, apart from an 8% increase in exchanges amongst young first time buyers.

While property exchange volumes held up with 966,464 homes exchanged in Q3 marking a 2.2% growth year on year, there was a decline of new properties coming on the market as homeowners have become more wary of listing their homes for sale – while suggested government proposals to make house sellers pay stamp duty instead of buyers in this quarter may have also contributed to this caution.

Q3 saw a total of 1,715,395 new instructions, 212,319 fall throughs and 801,013 withdrawals in the market, to change agent, or withdraw in this quarter.

Indicative of younger purchasers active in market, properties valued at £300k and below sold best in Q3, with exchanges up across all property price bands to this value compared to the same period last year. More properties were also exchanging from lower income household bands from £15,000 upwards. Overall households with income bands of £20,000-£50,000 were proportionally buying and selling more properties covering a total of 126,941 exchanges.

Comments Colin Bradshaw, Chief Customer Officer, TwentyCi: “Consistent to our previous reports, this last quarter has again shown an overall slower moving market, reflecting the current unpredictable trading environment. Consumers are showing caution when it comes to both buying and selling property. With the likely outcome of Brexit still unclear, the uncertainty over both the economy, consumer confidence and the housing market will persist at least in the short term.”

North-South divide - average asking prices

Nationwide, there is a clear North-South divide with any growth in average asking prices across the North of the UK and the Midlands, while London and the south show a small percentage reduction in average asking prices. The figures comprise a 7% growth in Scotland, 5% in North East, 4% in Yorkshire and the Humber and 2% in the North West and East Midlands. While there was a fall in asking prices of -3% in London, -2% in South East and -1% in South West.

While previous reports showed some growth in average asking prices for properties in the South of the UK, it is likely that homes in this region have seen average asking prices stabilise following their earlier peak – with the peak of this growth in the North.

But across the UK’s major cities average asking prices have been more resilient overall with more major cities reporting an increase for example, Leeds (7%) and Nottingham (5%) or holding steady – with the exceptions being Birmingham (-1%), London (-3%) and Southampton (-3%).

Sales Vs Rent – UK cities

Across most major UK cities properties for sale continue to hold the majority share vs. housing stock available for rent in the third quarter of 2019. But rental housing stock volumes for this period are also substantial. The exception, where there are greater numbers of rental homes offered to the market than the number of properties that exist for sale, are in London, Manchester and Leeds.

Online Vs High street agents

Online market share of all property exchanges remained stable at 7%, peaking at 7.9% in the 12 months to September 2019. In the same way that online/high street agent market share has followed a similar pattern throughout 2019 to date, so has market share by property price band, with lower priced homes steadily contributing to the sustained online agent growth. But to break through this 7% threshold a significant change in marketing will be needed to achieve substantial growth and compete on a greater scale with traditional high street agents.

Consistent to the last quarter, the largest growth of online agents is in Scotland in Q3 year on year, closely followed by the North East of England. This trend reflects the ongoing popularity of online agents with homeowners selling lower-priced properties typically found in these areas of the country. Online agents have also made significant gains in London and Scotland, potentially given their fixed cost appeal for greater consumer confidence.

Online agents are failing to gain traction with property sellers in the South West and the East of England where traditional high street agents have more market share and larger proportions of more premium properties are located.

Colin Bradshaw TwentyCi’s Chief Customer Officer, adds: “Online agents consistently resonate with the lower-value end of the housing market; to achieve significant growth across the market we would anticipate a change in approach from these agents to engage with the broader housing market.”

ENDS

**All data is based on Q3 2019 vs Q3 2018 year-on-year comparison unless otherwise stated.

Editor’s notes – The TwentyCi national Property & Homemover Report

• Customer insights company, TwentyCi’s Property & Homemover report is a comprehensive review of the UK property market, created from the most robust property change sources available – providing a real time review of the UK market and covering 96.6% of all property moves (both sales and rentals).
• This ‘state of the nation’ report provides unique insight into the people behind the numbers, creating a picture of the demographic, regional and socio-economic factors impacting the housing market including:

√ Factual data (not modelled or sentiment-based)

√ Full market coverage

√ Demographic overlay

√ Property sales data

√ Property rental data

√ Real-time data

• The TwentyCi National Property & Homemover Report is published quarterly

About TwentyCi

TwentyCi is a specialist customer insights company with exclusive access to more than 29 billion qualified property change sources across the whole property sector. It works with leading brands to create targeted marketing programmes across many different sectors including property, furniture, DIY, travel, automotive, telecoms and utilities.

Unlike other housing reports, which cover only a sub-section of the market or are based on sentiment, TwentyCi’s report is based on factual data covering 99.6% of both the property sales and rental markets, in addition to tracking sales momentum. For more information visit http://www.twentyci.co.uk

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