21st
Aug 2024
Landlords sick to their back teeth of high taxes and never ending red tape and selling up will benefit from what Rightmove calls a “buyer buzz”.
Rightmove’s latest house price index reports a drop of 1.5% this month minus £5,708 to an average £367,785. Over the past 18 years average prices have always dropped during August and how much it has fallen reflects the long term average.
The portal says for those sellers who put their properties up for sale at this usually quieter time of the year may be in dire straits and will offer competitive prices. However Rightmove says that this year’s summer sellers could find “there is a degree of buyer buzz around the market that was missing in the peak-mortgage-rate market at this time last year.”
Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property science, says: “The first Bank Rate cut since 2020 has sparked a welcome late summer boost in buyer activity. While mortgage rates aren’t yet substantially lower since the rate cut, the fact that the long-hoped-for first cut has finally arrived, and mortgage rates are heading downwards, is positive for home-mover sentiment. As the summer holiday season comes to an end, the conditions are there for a more active autumn market.
“The reaction from home-movers to what is hopefully only the first of several rate cuts over the next year or two, combined with other positive data and trends, has led us to raise our price prediction for the year. We now expect new seller prices to rise marginally by 1% over the whole of 2024. This is a relatively small revision from our original prediction of a 1% fall in prices over the year, since we didn’t initially forecast anything more drastic than a slight drop in prices this year.”
After the Bank Rate cut on August 1st agents have enjoyed an increase in the number of potential buyers wishing to view properties 19% higher than in August 2023.
The portal also says that mortgage rates are continually falling which has picked up speed in recent weeks.
An average five year fixed mortgage rate is now 4.8% which is lower by 1.2% in August 2023’s 5.82%. Rightmove’s weekly mortgage tracker finds the lowest 5 year fixed rate is now 3.83% with a 40% deposit and is the lowest since September 2022.
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