Available residential property listings across the country are at historic lows according to property data firm Homesearch.
The company, which focuses its services on helping agents target specific homes to find and win new instructions, says that of the 708,000 individual properties it’s tracking as currently on the market, some 480,646 are currently under offer or sold-subject-to-contract.
This leaves just 246,354 still available.
With 67 per cent of the entire active market already under offer it means that on average, across the country, each estate agency branch only has approximately 12.6 available instructions to sell.
The firm says this may account for why many would-be sellers are holding back because they fear they will have nowhere to move to.
Sam Hunter, chief operating officer at Homesearch, says: “Every day we all read a new article about how high buyer demand is and how, when a home is priced well, it’s often sold within the first few days after 20-plus viewings and multiple, competing offers.
“But it’s only when looking at the data so you see the extent of the ‘listings crisis’ as I’ve heard it termed.
“We know there’ll be branches with more than 12.6 available instructions, and there’s likely to be a few with less, but as an average, it’s well below where we - and many of the agents we speak to - would expect it to be.”
Hunter concludes: “With less than one per cent of the entire UK property stock currently available to buy, it’s no wonder frustrated would-be sellers are hesitant because they believe there’s simply nothing suitable to buy.”
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The stamp duty frenzy leveraged decisions from he future.
That there is currently a 'listings crisis' should simply be accepted as predictable. A fact borne from reaction to rent events.
The OTT activity of the last 15 or so months came about as home buying and selling decisions that would otherwise have been taken late '21 and through '22 were brought forward
You can't leverage hundreds of thousands of completions from the future and then be surprised when there's nothing going on for a wee while after.
Best hunker down to next spring....let the market (the people within it) have their lives catch up.
Hunkering down to next Spring is all well & good, how do you make money until then during the 'listing crisis'?
Of you are sensible you saved money from the good times
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