We are in that period we always fail to recall from whence we were last here, with the market in hiatus prior to a General Election. This of course is just what we needed in the property industry after, as an EU negotiator put it, "the cat fight in the Conservative Party" that gave us the wholly unnecessary European Referendum. So we were reeling from the severe contraction in market volume as a result of the outcome of the Referendum before the election came along (general uncertainty having caused many prospective Sellers a bout of decision paralysis in 2017), and now the situation is further compounded because of “politics”.
I have personally been in the industry for 34 years, and these are a wholly unique set of conditions that we are trading through. So we ought to ask, “who are the beneficiaries”, for there is always an up-side for someone?
By and large the market is skewed towards giving an advantage to buyers and you would think that with historically low numbers of properties coming to the market, and the cost of borrowing also at an historic low, that this should continue fuelling demand for the more limited number of properties available, and therefore prices should be continuing to rise - BUT, this is not what is happening. When the word "uncertainty" comes in to the mix, this is the curse of all markets, be they financial, property or otherwise.
The reality is that this represents an advantageous time to buy, given that the "froth" that has been in the market for some time has come off, which is not to say that property prices are dropping, because they aren't, they are just more stable - As long as of course, the property price point has been realistically set by the agent and Seller.
For buyers purchasing at under £937,500, there is a also a double benefit, for they are not only able to buy in a market where runaway capital growth has flat lined, but they also benefit from the reduced rates of Stamp Duty as a result of the Cameron government's changes to the SDLT charging system some 18 months ago.
Demand hasn't gone away, and in point of fact sentiment amongst the buying community is positive, albeit somewhat frustrated by the lack of properties being listed
Prices won't be dropping any time soon given the paucity of supply, but we most certainly will have these conditions throughout the duration of the "Brexit" negotiations, given that that word "uncertainty" will not be going away any time soon.
Well researched, good advice from your agent is more than ever critical at the point of valuation today, and consistent feedback from viewers is very much key to establishing exactly how a marketing campaign is behaving in the prevailing conditions. Beware that your agent is not of the "chasing prices to the bottom" mindset, for we are most certainly not trading in recessionary conditions, they are just challenging - and challenging requires creativity, hard work and experience to work through and achieve the desired objective.
