New Listings Still Entering Market Despite Lockdown

Recent data suggests new listings could fall to around 1,000 per week within the next month, but people are still placing their homes for sale post-lockdown.

According to House Vault, specialists in data marketing and analytics, new listings will fall below 1,000 unless the property market considers innovative marketing strategies or alternatives to mainstream agents over the months ahead.

Given the advice issued at the end of March to delay home moves wherever possible, the number of new listings entering the market may be surprising. According to twentyci’s recent client briefing, nearly 9,000 homes were listed last week.

Whilst this represented just 28 per cent of the weekly average of 32,000 new listings, this could still be viewed as a fairly high figure in the recent climate.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a rise in unoccupied property with new builds increasing from around 7.2 per cent of the total average new listing stock to 11.7 per cent.

Online auction sites have also increased their market share from 1.3 per cent to 1.8 per cent and hybrid agents grabbing an additional 2 per cent of new listings with their share increasing from 7.3 per cent to 9.3 per cent since March 22.

The types of properties coming to the market since lockdown tend to be cheaper properties with those under £200,000 increasing their share of newly listed properties by 5.41 percent and those between £200,000 and £400,000 rising by 2.57 per cent.

Conversely, new listings priced between £400,000 and £1 million have fallen by 12.13 per cent with property worth more than a million declining by 1.63 per cent.

A House Vault statement read:

“The current headwinds from the government’s advice to avoid moving home will certainly see new listings and newly sold listings take a further drop of 70-80% next week depending on how agents can adapt to virtual listings. SSTC should drop at a fast pace next month since the recent drops have lagged new listings.

“Now that new weekly listings have broken below 10,000, unless agents can adapt quickly to new ways of listings, we expect to see 1,000-2,000 new listings a week. The new listings acts as a leading indicator of the long term health of the housing market, so if agents can adapt to the situation we would see the strong possibility of a quick rebound of homes selling once restrictions are lifted.”

The twentyci briefing, commented:

“New Instructions volumes are now down to about 28% of their weekly 2019 norms – we would expect c32,000 New Instructions per week into our database and we are getting c8,800.

“But just think about that for a second – there are still nearly 9,000 people a week listing their house for sale with a complete Covid-19 lock down and knowing that right now, they are not allowed any physical viewings. We thought about it, and we were curious to know more!”