Was there a Boxing Day property listings boost?

Agents are preparing to return for a full week of work as the festive period comes to an end, but was there a Boxing Day listings boost?

The idea of a wave of listings going live on Boxing Day is a marketing ploy mainly used by portals to encourage agents and sellers to list their homes when potential buyers may be bored of turkey sandwiches and Christmas crackers, so could instead be browsing property listings online.

There is also an argument that potential vendors may realise how much more or less space they need having had the family around at Christmas.

Estate Agent Today understands that the portals will release data this week showing whether there was an uptick in new listings, especially with a market downturn predicted.

For now, our incredibly unscientific research shows there was a slight boost but not as much compared with the number of listings that went live in the final two weeks of the year.

We searched for listings 40 miles from London on Rightmove that were added in the seven days between 26 December and 2 January and the website returned 2,799 properties for sale. 

Many of these were price reductions though and in the past two weeks there have been 14,554 listings added, suggesting there wasn’t a massive influx within this search radius at least since Boxing Day.

Similarly, Zoopla had 2,000 new results in the seven days between 26 December to 2 January, but 9,220 when you go back by two weeks