HOW COVID-19 RESHAPING THE LONDON PROPERTY MARKET. YOU CAN'T PREDICT THAT...

Based on the latest statistics there have been 373,000 property transactions paused during coronavirus lockdown, which meant that the combined estimated value of £82bn was paused.

While we have seen the demand for homes falling by 70% over March, the demand has seen recovery signs over the three weeks up to 19th April. In a few days, the full report of the ABRICKO April market will be available.

What are the Estate Agents doing?

While the agents are stacking up with new supply, the number of homes for sale is just 4% lower than at the start of March, signalling no mass withdrawal by vendors. The numbers are actually not so disastrous as many have thought.

Annual house price growth is +1.8%. This is considered low by recent standards but higher than a year ago, which was +1.2%.

As the London market often is the core centre of the housing market movements that ripple towards the North of England and signalling the future potential, let’s have a look what does the London market bring us.

We focus on looking into the year on year growth in the London areas listings price, across the four major platforms Rightmove, Zoopla, Onthemarket and Prime location. Tracking the "open market" gives a highly correlated trend today of what will be later the "sold" trend. Looking in London there are significant changes in quite a few places.

Postcode Open Market change in last 12 mths

SW10 +83.8%

TW1 +76.51%

SW1V +45.23%

EN4 +29.46%

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As shown in the table above the median prices of the properties currently on the open market have spiked in at least those four areas in London with the highest spike being in SW10. Of course, this could mean several things, one of which is that the sellers are looking to try the market and check whether the demand is still there.

There are many other areas in London showing the rays of sunshine for the property market and you can find out more about it via Abricko! According to the current estimates of the reports available, we could see, so far, a 50% drop in completed housing sales in 2020 compared to 2019. This indicates that the sellers in some areas are going to lower the asking price of their properties and we are already seeing this in London.

This is where the current property market is much gloomier according to March 2020.

Postcode

Open Market change in last 12 mths

SE13 -13.19%

BR3 -15%

CM14 -14.22%

KT11 -17.64%

Despite the decline in activity levels and the prices in some areas, the demand has not dried up entirely. It is not surprising to see an increased interest in housing and particularly in London where the concerns in the last 4 years saw the market under-perform.

The future trajectory of the property market is still unclear. This is particularly seen in London where the market is showing significant fluctuations in different areas ranging between -25% to over 80%. However, we can track these changes simply by looking at the millions of pieces of data available on Abricko.

Check out the market yourself on FREE Desktop Demo or Book Abricko FREE demo session today