The average time it takes to sell a home has dropped by almost two weeks as pent-up demand has shifted the housing market up a gear, according to Zoopla.
The website says the average number of days from a property being listed on the site to its status being updated to “sold subject to contract” since the market reopened has fallen to 27 days, down from 39 over the same period in 2019.
Meanwhile Zoopla says that house prices were up by 2.5 per cent across the UK to an average of £253,600 in the year to July as demand continues to outstrip supply.
Three bedroom houses are selling fastest at an average of 24 days, while time to sell for four and five bed houses has fallen by a third to 29 and 32 days respectively as following the experience of confinement during lockdown, buyers appear to be prioritising homes with more space.
One-bed properties were the slowest to sell at an average of 34 days, but this was still down substantially from 41 days last year.
Zoopla research and insight director Richard Donnell says: “Housing market conditions remain unseasonably strong despite the UK moving into recession.
“The next important milestone for the housing market comes in September when schools reopen and the UK starts to get back towards a full reopening of the economy.
“The ‘once in a lifetime’ re-evaluation of housing requirements on the back of the lockdown will be a counterweight to the impact of the recession on housing market activity over the rest of 2020.
“While demand has softened over August, we expect the current momentum in market activity to continue into Q4.”
Zoopla’s research shows that more homes are being listed for sale in areas with a wealthy demographic of residents.
Donnell says: “With half of all homeowners having no mortgage and a large portion of the remainder having considerable equity in their homes, the constraints of affordability and mortgage availability are not spread equally across buyers and sellers.
“The demographic profile of households is not uniformly distributed by geography.
“We believe part of this shift reflects an increase in activity in London and south east England where housing sales volumes in 2019 were up to 20 per cent lower than in 2015.
“A soft repricing of the housing in these regions over the last five years has improved affordability while the recent stamp duty changes will have contributed to more homes coming to the market for sale.”
Turning to the wider economic picture, Donnell says that while there has been a sharp contraction and unemployment is rising, consumer spending has rebounded and purchasing manager indices are pointing to rebound.
He adds: “This is positive but the unwinding of the furlough scheme and other government support is the next challenge that will test the strength of economic recovery. In the short term we still believe that house prices will end the year 2 per cent to 3 per cent higher than at the start.”
