As of the week ending April 7, 2024 (Week 14), the UK property market experienced a predictable decline in property listings and sales due to the usual Easter season slowdown.
During the latest episode of the UK Property Market Stats Show featuring Alice Bullard from Nested, the key highlights are:
- Average sale price for homes agreed upon in April is £346 per square foot, an increase from earlier in the year.
- There was a 20.3% decrease in property listings in Week 14 in comparison to the previous week, attributed to the Easter holiday.
- Total sales for the year-to-date (YTD) are 9% higher than in 2023, and 6.9% higher than average levels during 2017-2019.
- Net sales rose by 3.3% compared to Week 14 in 2023, yet were 9.1% lower than the average weekly sales in 2024, also impacted by the Easter week.
- Over 20% of property sales are still failing to complete.
- There were 30,312 new property listings, bringing the YTD figure to 476,586. This is 8.9% higher than the 8-year historical YTD average and 8.6% higher than the YTD total for 2023.
- The average listing price for properties is £449,059.
- The gap between the average asking price of new listings this week and the properties that went sale agreed is still at 23%, higher than the long-term average of 16-17%. This is due to overvaluation throughout the UK and fewer properties from London & SE in the mix.
- Price reductions occurred for 17,390 properties last week, which is quite high compared to the 8-year average for Week 14. This equates to approximately 1 in 8.53 properties having their price reduced monthly.
- The average asking price for those reduced properties is £394,354.
- There was a gross sale of 21,235 properties last week, a drop of 11.2% from the prior week’s figures, though this is typical for the Easter weekend.
- YTD accumulative gross sales have reached 323,617, surpassing the average stats from the years 2017-2019, and also higher than the Week 14 mark in 2023.
- The average asking price of sold subject to contract (STC) properties remains in the range of £350k to £360k, currently at £364,719.
- Sale fall-throughs have significantly decreased to 4,737, much lower than the average rate in 2023, and even more impressive considering the high number of fall-throughs following the Truss’onomics Budget in late 2022.
- The fall-through rate has decreased to 20.27% for the week, below the 8-year average of 24.8%.
- Net sales dipped to 16,498 compared to the previous week’s figure.
- YTD accumulative net sales stand at 254,041, which is 4.3% above the average figure for 2017-2019 and 11.5% above the 2023 YTD total for net sales.
- At the end of March 2024, there were 654,913 UK properties for sale, marking an 11.8% rise from the end of March 2023.
- At the end of Q1 2024, properties in estate agents’ sale agreed pipelines accounted for 410,841, 10.4% higher than at the same time in 2023.
