For the first email of the year, I thought I’d take a look at 2021 as a whole and compare it to the most recent couple of years. (For reference, these figures are based on the whole of the UK)
So let’s start off with the sales market…
New Instructions
Throughout 2021, new property coming onto the market ‘For Sale’ was a concern, in that the volumes were far lower than sales being agreed and also lower than the last “normal” market of 2019. However, towards the end of 2021, the number of properties coming to the market got a lot closer to those weekly numbers of 2019 and even caught up with 2020 at the very end of the year – you can see this below:
Sales
Unlike property coming to the market ‘For Sale’, the number of sales being agreed across the UK was stronger than in 2019. All in all, throughout the year, 25% more properties achieved a ‘SSTC’ status in 2021 when compared to 2019.
Then, when compared to 2020, we saw 12% more properties sell in 2021. However, we know that the market in 2020 was affected both positively and negatively due to the start of the pandemic. The positives were the inflated sales market with the pent up demand and the want of many movers to get out their lockdown homes. But on the flip side, we did see 2 months of very little activity in the sales market when the country was initially shut down in March 2020.
Now we’ll take a look at the Rental market
New Instructions (To Let)
Similarly to the sales market, the were fewer properties coming onto the rental market generally every week when compared to both 2019 and 2020. In 2021, there was 20% fewer rental properties come onto the market compared to 2019 and 12% less properties than there was in 2020.
Let Agreed
Again, we saw fewer rental properties agree a let last year. However, the percentage decrease in 2021 was smaller than the number of properties coming to the market. We saw 4% less properties agree a let than in 2020 and 12% fewer than in 2019.
2022 Outlook
I know what a lot of you reading this are now thinking: So what does all this mean for 2022 then Matt?
Well, it’s a tricky one to call. The market is still not “normal” like the 2019 market was. Even then, the 2019 market was slightly shrouded by Brexit talk and general elections. General Elections always generally slow the market down for example.
However, I think the biggest issue we see in the market is the ongoing lack of property coming to the market compared to the number of sales being agreed.
For example, in December 2021, more sales were agreed than properties coming onto the market…again. However, the numbers were a lot closer together than they have been throughout the year. But there was still 1.5% more sales agreed than properties coming to the market for sale.
So all in all, currently we see this in the market:
Source: TwentyCi
