More than 100,000 additional house sales are expected during the first three months of 2021, as the rebound in the property market continues. Buyers rush to complete their purchases before the end of the stamp duty break. . .
The number of new sales being agreed remains 38% higher than it was a year ago, this according to property website Zoopla, predicts the housing market will be the busiest before Christmas than it has been for over one decade!
The UK housing market has rebounded since the summer because of frustrated demand following the first UK-wide lockdown, and after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, introduced a stamp duty break in July on properties up to £500,000 until March 2021.
The boom in property sales since the summer has been felt the most in London and southern England, where 7% more sales were recorded than in the previous year.
This whirlwind of interest from potential buyers has pushed up house prices by 3.5%, the highest level of growth for almost three years, and is set to increase further by the end of 2020.
Continued interest from homebuyers caused residential property transactions to surge by almost 10% in October, compared with a month earlier.
More than 105,000 residential transactions took place last month, an increase of nearly 10% compared with September, and 8.1% higher than October 2019, according to figures from HMRC.
“There haven’t been more transactions than this in a single month since March 2016, and even that was a very unusual spike created by tax changes for landlords,” the chairman of property developers Frank Grove PLC.
“The pandemic and a raft of measures to support the economy have delivered record house prices and, finally, a head-turning recovery in sales volumes”.
A last-minute surge of prospective buyers is expected in January, as purchasers try to beat the deadline for the stamp duty holiday. However, Zoopla said that only half of deals agreed that month will likely complete before the March deadline for the end of the stamp duty holiday.
Homebuyers have been warned and coronavirus restrictions are creating delays in the process. The number of mortgage approvals hit their highest level since before the financial crisis in September. Figures from the Bank of England showed almost 85,000 loans to fund a house purchase were approved in August alone.
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