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Exclusive blog: What is behind the subdued supply?

Landmark Estate Agency's MD looks at the drivers behind the current property listings drought in the market.

Ben Robinson

landmark blog

The latest quarterly Property Trends Report from Landmark Information Group came out this week and it provides an interesting insight into what the residential property market is doing, based on data that runs across the entire Landmark business.

This spans estate agency, through to mortgage valuations and legal conveyancing so provides a useful benchmark on which to track underlying market trends.

In the latest edition, a Demand Supply Variance chart was included that reveals an imbalance between low supply and growing demand.

In fact, property listings were reportedly down on average 9% when comparing Q3 of 2021 to 2019.

What is interesting is that despite the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday coming to a close, demand continues to remain strong suggesting an underlying strength in the market, which wasn’t being purely driven by the tax incentive.

Covid hesitancy

Supply does however remain relatively subdued despite the appetite to buy and the reasons behind the lack of supply aren’t clear.

Could it be down to a ‘Covid hesitancy’ from some who may be concerned about welcoming people into their homes for viewings?

Is it linked to the ‘great resignation’ that we are seeing where people are re-evaluating what is important in their lives and so selling their home isn’t a current priority?

Or perhaps there’s a general worry of not finding anything to buy that meets their needs, within their house price range, with stock levels remaining low?

We are now on the path towards the end of the year, which typically remains steady as buyers use Christmas as a completion or moving deadline to work to.

Of course, as the past year or so has now shown, we are continuing to live in times that are anything but typical, so we will be watching the market movements closely, and hope that a rebalance of supply and demand takes place as we look ahead to 2022.

Read the report in full.

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