Property market spring bounce

With the post-election drama dominating the news pages across the country over the past week, the housing market has reportedly side stepped the doom and gloom and continued to enjoy an increase in activity.

April’s Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) report claims that 17 per cent more chartered surveyors reported a rise as oppose to a fall in house prices, up from nine per cent in March.

As a chartered surveyor myself who has been submitting figures to RICS for its reports for over seven years, I could see that activity had picked up within Garside Waddingham and was encouraged to see that the newly agreed property sales balance turned positive for the first time this year, with twelve per cent more surveyors seeing vendors agree a sale, up from a negative reading of eight per cent in March.

The average number of completed sales per surveyor in the North West increased to 21 in April, compared to 20 in March, whilst the price balance rose to 5 per cent, up from 2 per cent the previous month. Forty-two percent of the region’s surveyors reported a healthy number of new instructions.

RICS has suggested that so far this year the housing market has been under the shadow of the general election with the gap between supply and demand growing wider as potential house buyers opted to stand on the sidelines awaiting the outcome of the poll. It suggested that the beginning of spring has seen renewed optimism with the good weather improving sentiment.

I would agree that the good weather has had an impact on the market, and believe once the dust has settled following the election, confidence will grow and we will see a slow, but steady, increase in activity, in both residential and commercial property markets.

John Waddingham, partner, Garside Waddingham Chartered Surveyors