New buyer enquiries fell by 6% last week as the stamp duty holiday unwinds and with “people turning their attention to the summer”, says the Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker.

While new seller enquiries were flat in the week ending 13 June, according to the data, drawn from the firm which manages live chat services to 3,800 estate agent offices, handling more than 2 million chats per year.

The research comes as stamp duty relief will be scrapped in two phases at the end of June and September.

It also comes at the start of the traditionally slower summer housebuying season.

Yomdel founder Andy Soloman says: “Estate agents are facing the tightest new instruction crunch in many years, with buyers scrapping for well-priced properties, but this is set to inevitably slow as the stamp duty holiday starts to be wound and people turning their attention to the summer.”

Soloman adds: “The sun has finally started to shine, there is the Euro 2020 football tournament underway and Wimbledon just round the corner so it is natural that peoples’ attention is shifting away from being hunkered down inside under lockdown and the evidence we have is that in property and numerous other sectors website traffic, and consequently new enquiry volumes, are dropping.”

However, the spike provided by the stamp duty holiday and the return of higher loan-to-value products mean enquiry levels remain at “elevated levels” compared to recent averages, says the tracker.

Buyer enquiries are this week 30% above the 62 weeks prior to the first lockdown on March 23 last year, the firm says, while seller enquiries are 26% above the same period before the first lockdown.

The tracker added that landlord enquiries lifted 8% last week, but remain 7% below the 62-week-period prior to the first lockdown.

Enquiries from tenants also rose 8%, and are 36% above the average before the health crisis.

Overall, estate agent website traffic is at 31% above normal, while new live chat leads remain 36% above the historic average.