Market Comment – July 2021

With the stamp duty holiday ending at the end of June, I wondered what the immediate after math would be like, however there was little change in July, save the obvious rush to get exchanged in the last week of June. Enquiries were at the same level and interestingly enough across our group, 58% of our enquiries were for houses for sale, 38% for flats and 4% for land. Obviously, the number of units we exchanged contracts on were not as high as June but this was to be expected.

Agreed sales across the group were still healthy and I note from several property pundits, that the number of homes being sold have hit levels not seen since comparable records in 2005. The number of transactions involving properties bought for £500,000 or more have increased 37% over the last 12 months to March, compared with a rise of 2% for all properties and I know it will interest a lot of our readers that annual house price increases were at a 17 year high in June and remain slightly un-changed in July.

Looking at the month ahead, I have spoken to all of our managers and we are confident of a strong month ahead of us and of course I will keep you updated during the month.

As ever, our residential lettings remained very strong and I am yet to collate the final figures, but it was almost a record month for the number of people we helped move home in the lettings market. We have recruited and heavily invested in our property management department as they go from strength to strength providing excellent customer service and I was delighted that we took over the management of two major developments in Croydon in July.

New Homes and Land was as strong as ever and as I reflect on July, in this respect it was a very solid month, with 6 land deals agreed which should bring us nearly 100 apartments after planning permission in the next 6 months.

On July 19^th there was an easing of restrictions for Covid and we at Streets Ahead have unanimously decided not to ease our systems and process with regards to strict Covid measures, including social distancing etc. and so far this has been unanimously welcomed by the staff to protect both us, our clients and the public.

I am really looking forward to August and I shall revert back to you with all developments later in the month.