The total Sales Agreed in 2020 so far has overtaken Sales Agreed up to this point in 2019, despite the Coronavirus crisis.

Property consultancy Twenty EA also says New instructions this year is 92 per cent of those reached at this point in 2019, despite the market lockdown.

On top of that Twenty EA says the market should prepare for a surge in exchanges, although these are currently running 25 per cent behind last year’s rate.

The consultancy says although there was a form of ‘Boris Bounce’ early in the year, the growth in Sales Agreed numbers really started as soon as the English housing market reopened.

That was sustained when the stamp duty holiday was announced, but the holiday itself does not appear to have led to a major spurt in Sales Agreed – at least so far.

“The stamp duty holiday did not make a massive difference to the volume of sales agreed on a weekly basis – certainly not enough to show clearly in the overall numbers. What we don’t know is what the graph would have looked like had the stamp duty holiday never been announced” says the consultancy.

It goes on to say: “In usual times, we would expect sales agreed will revert to normal demand levels when buyers believe that they cannot complete on a property purchase prior to the end of the stamp duty holiday on March 31 2021. It appears this realisation may dawn on many purchasers about the same time as the furlough scheme ends.  Could this be a double blow to consumer confidence in early November?”

Twenty EA says there are two other key triggers that important to examine – New Instructions and Exchanges.

“We would expect 2020 to have more New Instructions than 2019 by the end of the year. Presently, 2020 is 92 per cent of 2019” it says.

“2020 has only currently seen 75 per cent of the Exchanges seen in 2019 year to date. But … it will start to rise rapidly as these sales were agreed just after the reopening of the English market. Essentially there is a simple lag effect on Exchanges.”