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Property sales market ‘not come to a complete standstill yet’

Zoopla says its latest cities index shows activity down by only 15% week-on-week but paints a gloomy picture for the coming months as sales agreed dip by nearly two thirds, it predicts.

Nigel Lewis

zoopla

The housing market has not come to a complete standstill yet, Zoopla has claimed, revealing that ‘sales agreed’ have only dipped by 15% week-on-week, and are only 4% down on the same time last year.

But this is not likely to last, the figures from Zoopla’s UK Cities House Price Index reveal. It predicts that next month and beyond sales agreed are likely to be reduce by 80%.

The index also predicts that, overall, housing transactions are due to dip by nearly two thirds over the next three months as the Coronavirus-induced economic deep freeze takes hold.
Zoopla says buyer demand for properties dipped last week by 40% compared to the week before.

This takes demand back to where it was a year ago and sadly wipes out the gains the gains enjoyed by the property market following the General Election.

People have also been abandoning sales in greater numbers, and the number of fall-through increased by 60% last week compared to the week before, while the number of new buyers in the market has slumped.

donnell zoopla“The initial impact of external shocks is to reduce consumer confidence and put a brake on housing demand and the number of people moving home, which we can see in our latest figures,” says Richard Donnell (left), Director of Research and Insight at Zoopla.

“We do not expect any immediate impact on prices. Beyond this, the outlook for house prices largely depends upon how the Government’s major package of support for business and households reduces the scale of the economic impact.”

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March 26, 2020

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