House sales dip but remain high

8th August 2019 in Property Industry News

The latest housing survey from UK estate agents shows that demand from buyers continues to be high.

The NAEA Propertymark housing report for June shows that the number of house hunters fell slightly from 307 to 305 per agency branch although the number of prospective buyers remains high.

Year-on-year, housing demand is almost aligned, with just a 1% difference from June 2018 when there was an average of 308 house hunters per branch.

The number of sales agreed per member branch remained at nine in June, the same level for the second month running while year-on-year the number of property transactions stayed the same, with an average of nine sales agreed per branch in June 2018.

First time buyer sales took a dip in June, falling from 26% in May to 23% of overall sales in June, a 6% decrease from June 2018.

Mark Hayward, chief executive, NAEA Propertymark said: “Although we’ve seen a slight drop in supply and demand, the housing market is still stronger than expected, showing signs of resilience amid political uncertainty.

“The warmer months can often result in the market quietening down, but we’re not experiencing this just yet as demand remains high for the year.

“We’ll need to see if this trend continues over the next few months before we can conclusively say that confidence in the market has returned.”

NAEA Propertymark (formally National Association of Estate Agents) is the UK’s leading professional body for estate agency personnel – representing members from over 12,000 offices.