Buyer urgency fading from the property market, agent claims

The level of homes being snapped up within two weeks of being listed has fallen to 6.8% across the UK market in a further sign that the pandemic property boom is over.

Estate agent Barrows and Forrester analysed for sale stock levels across the major property portals, looking specifically at homes that have been listed within the past 14 days, what percentage of these have already been sold subject to contract and how this has changed since June of this year. 

The research found that six months ago, 11.2% of all homes listed for no longer than two weeks were being snapped up by buyers across the UK market.

Today, however, this proportion has fallen to just 6.8%, indicating a clear cooling in the manic market conditions that have gripped the property sector since the pandemic. 

Every area of the UK has seen a drop, according to the analysis, suggesting that the high levels of buyer demand seen in recent years are starting to fade. 

In Wales, 5.8% of homes listed within the last two weeks have been sold subject to contract, down from 12.3% just six months ago - the largest change.

These regional trends are also apparent at city level, with Edinburgh seeing a 13.9% drop in homes going under offer within a fortnight alongside reductions of 8.7% in Glasgow and 6.7% in Birmingham.

Just two cities are currently going against the wider grain, the agent found.

In Liverpool, 15% of all homes listed within the last 14 days are securing a buyer, up 4.5% versus the past six months, with Leeds also seeing a marginal 0.2% uplift.

James Forrester, managing director of Barrows and Forrester, said: “The property market has been moving at an extreme pace in recent years, with a vast number of homebuyers fighting it out for limited stock as soon as it reaches the market. 

“In many cases, we’ve seen numerous buyers offering on a property within weeks, if not days of it being listed online and this has been one of the driving factors behind the meteoric rates of house price growth that we’ve seen up and down the nation.

“However, this feeding frenzy certainly looks to be subsiding to some extent as the increasing cost of borrowing has dampened the appetite of the nation’s buyers.

“That’s not to say that homes aren’t still selling, or achieving a good price when doing so, but there has been a notable reduction in the urgency with which buyers are acting.”