The housing market in England and Wales is stabilising, according to analysis of web traffic from a property advice site.
Valuation requests on Property Price Advice are now roughly in line with the four-year average, having fallen back from their early summer level of almost 70 per cent above the four year norm.
It expects average house prices in November and December to be 3.3 per cent ahead of the same months in 2019, whilst transaction levels are predicted to be 6.4 per cent below 2019 levels.
However, that 6.4 per cent figure masks significant regional variations- transactions are set to be 11.6 per cent in the north of England and 5.8 per cent in Wales; meanwhile in south east England transactions are expected to be o.2 per cent up on last year.
“Activity from our web users in October was closer to what we’ve been seeing over the last few years, and shows the buzz of the post-lockdown summer market is certainly cooling” says website founder Peter Sherrard.
“Clearly the dynamics of unemployment, mortgage lending criteria, general housing supply for sale, all coupled with a potential covid vaccine, will have a profound effect on transaction levels and potentially price.”
Property Price Advice was founded in 2005 as a free-to-use consumer site; its research is calculated via an algorithm built on. Usage data from the website.