Following on from the Chancellors budget announcement that the stamp duty freeze would be kept in place until June 2021, demand for property is currently outstripping supply.

The start of the traditional spring selling period saw the number of sales agreed for the first week in March up by 12% on 2020 despite the current shortage of available stock. Rightmove data shows there is a surging level of demand in the UK housing market, making for one of the strongest starts to the spring season ever.
 
A record number of prospective buyers are enquiring about properties on Rightmove. Demand in the housing market is 34% higher than the strong pre-lockdown market from a year ago. The average asking price of a property going up for sale has increased by 2.7% in the last 12 months. This has increased the national average to £321,064. Additionally, asking prices grew for the second month in-a-row. A rise of 0.8%, or £2,484, was recorded in March.

Measures announced in the Spring Budget, not only included the stamp duty holiday extension but the mortgage guarantee scheme, has boosted the housing market. Since the day of the announcement, Rightmove have said that they have seen a spike in online property searches.

Already high levels of buyer demand caused by the lockdowns has continued to surge since the start of the year. This demand will be further boosted, as from the start of April the new Government guarantees enabling lenders to bring back 5% deposit mortgages begins.

With demand for homes so high, if you are thinking of moving, now is the perfect time to get your home on the market!

In one of the most eagerly anticipated budgets for a number of years, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced good news for the property industry by extending the stamp duty holiday for house buyers for a further three months until the end of June 2021.

Purchases up to £500,000 will continue to be free from the tax until this date – with homes bought up to a value of £250,000 being extended even further to the end of September 2021. Sunak announced on 3rd March “To smooth the transition back to normal, the nil rate band will be £250,000, double its standard level, until the end of September – and we will only return to the usual level of £125,000 from 1 October.”

This news will be a huge relief to the industry as a whole, with widespread worry around the 160,000 home sales stuck in limbo and at risk of falling through if the holiday period was not extended. It is thought that the three-month extension is costing an estimated £1bn, adding to the £271bn the government has already borrowed this financial year to deal with Coronavirus.

The Chancellor also confirmed a new scheme to provide mortgages to homebuyers who put forward only a 5 per cent deposit, encouraging banks to lend to those with smaller savings pots. The government will take on some of the loan risk in the form of a state guarantee.

“A policy that gives people who can’t afford a big deposit the chance to buy their own home,” he told MPs. “As the prime minister has said, we want to turn generation rent into generation buy.”

It was confirmed that the Government would back the loans, which will be available on homes costing up to £600,000. Banks and building societies are not obliged to offer the mortgages, but Sunak said in his speech that several have already committed to do so. The scheme will begin in April and will be available on new mortgages taken out until 31 December 2022.

The number of people owning property under the age of 40 has plummeted over the years as young people face rising rent costs along with soaring house prices. It is hoped that with the new 5% deposit mortgages back on the table, that more people are able to afford these smaller deposit amounts required in order to buy a home.

2020 was a tough year for everyone including many businesses across the whole UK. In terms of the housing market though, there is plenty to smile about at the end of what has been a turbulent 12 months, with one of the busiest years on record. Many predicted a downward spiral for house prices as a result of the pandemic, but the opposite has happened, with prices staying on an upwards trajectory.

Zoopla announced it saw the busiest run up to Christmas for over a decade, with the market recording sales agreed on more homes in 2020 than in 2019 during the same period. They also announced a 70.5 per cent increase in traffic on Boxing day as people look to take advantage of the stamp duty freeze. This is set to intensify in January given the now imminent end to the stamp duty holiday, which is set to bring more hungry buyers into the market, keen to find and complete on their new home before the stamp duty deadline expires at the end of March.

Boxing day is always a good indicator of how the market is likely to perform at the start of 2021, so to see such huge numbers of interested potential buyers is very promising. A contributing factor will certainly be the national lockdown that is still ongoing, with more people at home having the time to look at what is on the market, not to mentioned revaluating if they have enough space during a period where the whole family is around.

Once the stamp duty holiday concludes at the end of March, there will likely be a slowdown in sales completions as the impetus to move amongst buyers motivated by stamp duty savings dissipates. This will have a knock on effect on transaction volumes later in the year as stamp duty is reintroduced.

Zoopla’s are anticipating house price growth across the country in 2021 to be around 1.0 per cent on average – this will run within a narrow range from 1.75 per cent in Scotland to just 0.5 per cent in the East of England and the North East.

Overall it’s not all doom and gloom out there, especially within the property sector. With the hope of successful mass vaccination and a rising trend in people looking to move home, as a year of homeworking has led people to re-evaluate their housing needs, there is confidence across the industry that momentum will continue into 2021.