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House Prices Rise but Slowdown Looms
After a prolonged seller’s market, there are signs of a slowdown, with supply and demand beginning to harmonise, despite the average price of a UK property hitting a new record, with Rightmove reporting a 9.3% increase over the past year.
Rightmove also highlighted the 13% increase in the number of sellers as the catalyst for first-time buyers facing less competition, although it is anticipated that the Bank of England’s withdrawal of the affordability test will once again increase demand and property prices.
Speaking to PropertyWire, Simon Bath, CEO of iPlace Global – creators of Moveable, pointed to the fact that the “smaller increments in the rise of prices [exhibit] signs that the property market could be on track for a slowdown in the latter half of the year.” Bath also emphasises that the government’s inability to deliver on the promise of 300,000 new homes per year has increased pressure on domestic developers to rectify the supply and demand imbalance.
The rising prices are making it difficult for first-time buyers to get on the ladder, placing yet another question mark over the government’s Levelling Up plan, as high price and low supply are creating an increasingly exclusive market. To combat this, Bath also implored the government to introduce new schemes to replace Help to Buy.
A further challenge facing the industry is the average completion time following agreement of sale, with the current 150 days eclipsing the 100 day average of 2019, with conveyancing build-up and supply chain issues being the chief culprits. It is surprising that in 2022, most conveyancers still rely heavily on paper-based, manual processes. For this reason, we have introduced a digital conveyancing to our award-winning Spaciable portal – Spaciable Legal.
Through Spaciable Legal, sales admins, solicitors and homebuyers will all have access to the dashboard, keeping everything in one transparent location, allowing parties to work through what is required from them anywhere, anytime. Spaciable Legal automates key processes to ensure quicker turnaround times for quotes, local searches, anti-money laundering checks, contract exchanges and payments, and provides residual income from referrals. To find out more, please contact sales@spaciable.com
