Rather than the usual end-of-year lull that comes from buyers and sellers winding down for Christmas, 2024 is seeing an acceleration in the UK property market in the final quarter.
The average number of new prospective buyers in the UK property market hit 100 per member branch in Propertymark’s latest Housing Insight report, hitting a two-year high for the month.
The number of househunters has been on the rise for most of the second half of the year so far, according to the report. This reflects growing confidence and appetite across the market, and comes alongside an improvement in affordability due to stronger wage growth.
There has also been an uplift in sales volumes for October, in what the report describes as a lagging measure due to the fact it reflects completed transactions, and therefore takes some weeks to emerge. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the sales volume for the month was 23% higher than October 2023.
With mortgage rates having improved compared with where we started the year, the report also shows an increase in gross mortgage advances in the latest available data (from Q2 2024). The value of new commitments has also increased, showing buyers are pushing ahead with higher priced properties and showing less caution than they may have done at the start of the year.
Affordability eases among UK property buyers
One of the focal points of the latest report is on affordability, which is measured as a survey of adults who are asked how difficult they find it to pay their mortgage or their rent.
In the latest result, the highest proportion of respondents (44%) said they found it ‘somewhat easy’ to pay their living costs, when considering the period between 2nd October and 27th October 2024.
The second highest proportion of people (27%) said it was ‘somewhat easy’ to cover their mortgage or rent, while 15% described it as ‘very easy’. Only 7% said it was currently ‘very difficult’ to cover the costs, while the same figure answered ‘don’t know/prefer not to say’.
Nathan Emerson, CEO of Propertymark, commented: “Affordability continues to improve for many across the country and with that, so has activity. Prices may fluctuate to align with home movers’ desires and budgets, and we expect to see a healthy and adaptable market in 2025.”
Sellers are rebalancing the market
House prices continue to climb across all regions in the UK property market, but growth in the number of people putting properties up for sale means a better balance between buyers and sellers – and takes sellers out of the driving seat to some extent.
According to the report, new supply (which is measured by new sales instructions) has increased slightly on the previous month, but remains significantly up from December 2023. In October, there were an average of 13.5 new homes put up for sale per member branch, up from around four per branch last December.
Total stock levels in the UK property market (including properties that were not newly listed in October but were for sale) also increased during the month, rising to 49 properties per member branch. Again, this number has climbed fairly consistently over the course of this year.
It appears likely that both buyers and sellers will continue to push ahead to get achieve their UK property goals over the coming months, due to a combination of renewed economic confidence, and the potential property tax changes that could be on their way in the form of stamp duty changes from April 2025.
Nathan Emerson said: “As we head into the New Year, the sales market is set to see a trend unlike those historically seen across the winter months, with buyers and sellers, especially across England and Northern Ireland, pushing their sales and purchases through to save potentially thousands of pounds before the changes to Stamp Duty thresholds take effect from April 2025.”
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