Prospective homebuyers waiting until the new year to look for a house and looking to enjoy the Stamp Duty cut are “cutting it fine”, warns Zoopla.

It has found that the current sales pipeline is 50 per cent bigger than it was this time last year, with 418,000 sales progressing at the moment, valued at £112bn in total. This is 140,000 more than there were last year.

In August this year, sales agreed reached an annual high, coming in at 62 per cent more than in August 2019. This October, sales agreed are 53 per cent higher year-on-year.

Zoopla research and insight director Richard Donnell points out that, “just half of sales agreed in January will convert into a completed sale by the end of March,” and that, “finding an agent before Christmas and instructing a conveyancer to prepare all the sellers legal information will be essential to boosting the chances of saving up to £15,000.”

As demand has gone up so has supply: Zoopla’s research shows that the number of homes for sale is 18 per cent higher year-on-year, and in London, 39 per cent higher in certain areas.

It adds that UK house prices are up 3 per cent on a yearly basis, with the average residential property price this September coming in at £219,800.

Yes Homebuyers founder and managing director Matthew Cooper comments: “While a 50 per cent annual uplift in the number of sales currently progressing through the pipeline seems like a positive for the market, it is, in fact, causing it to buckle at the seams.

“Not only are we seeing a higher level of homebuyers rush to buy when compared to last year but a combination of furlough and redundancies means we’re seeing a significantly smaller workforce try to service them.

The result is some pretty hefty delays completion times across an industry that was already pretty lethargic at full strength and this will have implications further down the line. We expect once many buyers realise the chance of a stamp duty saving is slipping through their fingers there will be a large degree of renegotiations and sales falling through. Given the current volume of those potentially in line, this is likely to bring a chaotic few months to the UK property market.”