 |
COUNTRY MARKET COMMENT |
|
Above: Somerset, £2 million
guide
Top left & far left: Buckinghamshire, £1.5 million
guide
Above left: Suffolk, 1.1 million guide |
Small but strong at the top
Jackson-Stops
& Staff figures suggest that the rally of the top
of the market during the second half of last year, now
confirmed by Land Registry data, continues unabated. The
market at lower levels, too, is looking much more robust
than a year ago. Given that ‘the top’ is a more
exclusive club than you might think, this is fortunate
for all concerned.
What percentage of residential property sales involve
a selling price of more than £500,000? The question
is relevant because when asked to discuss ‘the top
end of the market’, estate agents tend to avoid defining
it. This is commercially understandable (no one wants
to alienate potential clients) but it does tend to shackle
any debate from the outset. Statisticians, on the other
hand, have no such sensitivities, needing only to turn
to the numbers. And what the Land Registry’s numbers
reveal is that, when talking about England & Wales
as a whole, any notion of setting the bar at, say, £1
million or more is statistically fairly meaningless, involving
less than 0.4% of all sales. From our point of view, on
the other hand, a glance at these pages will tell you
why starting ‘the top' at anything less than £500,000
would simply lack credibility. Even then, at just 2.65%
of all buyers, those paying half a million plus in 2005
were a rare breed. This might make them statistically
uninteresting, were it not for the fact that, despite
paying stamp duty at four times the rate of buyers of
average price houses, they led the market rally of last
year. Our own sales, which are weighted towards the £500,000
plus market but which include many cottages and pieds-à-terre
below that level, jumped by 22%, year-on year, in the
final quarter. Land Registry figures are even more dramatic:
a 30% jump in the volume of year-on-year sales at over
half a million, more than twice that of the rest of the
market.
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Furthermore,
demand via Jackson-Stops & Staff offices shows this
group continuing in confident form. Our relative new demand
(the number of new potential buyers registering for every
newly-marketed property) is healthy, being at about the
average of recent years. Prices, meanwhile, continue to
nudge upwards in general and, in a small but growing number
of instances, to make something of a jump, giving some
credence to those who talk of a return to double-digit
price growth and further confounding the harbingers of
doom. Supporting this, our own average sale price currently
shows a year-on-year increase of over 8%.
So what of the future? The demand referred to above gives
us a picture of good activity for the coming months. Beyond
that attention must, as ever, focus on interest rates.
Here, the markets too, appear to be in confident mood,
with most commentators anticipating long term stability
and, our colleagues at JSS Private Finance report, a growing
number of lenders offering long term fixed loans at rates
below their variable rate offerings. This suggests a belief
that the trend in interest rates is stable, creating a
favourable outlook for property. Given this, and the fact
that many of the financial market makers are the very
people buying high value property, the confidence being
shown at the top of the market – however you may
care to define it – starts to make a great deal of
sense.
England & Wales residential
sales, 2005
(source: Land Registry) |
| Price Range |
No.
|
%
|
| Up to £500,000 |
872502
|
97.35
|
| £501,000 - £1,000,000 |
20287
|
2.26
|
| £1,000,001 - £2,000,000 |
2914
|
0.33
|
| £2,000,000 |
547
|
0.06
|
| Total |
896250
|
100.00
|
Left: Northamptonshire, £3
million guide |
 |
|
Left Top: Berkshire, 1.65 million guide
Second Left: Lincolnshire,
£1 million guide
Third Left: Gloucestershire, £925,000 guide
Bottom Left: North Yorkshire, £975,000 guide
Above Centre: Surrey, £1.65
million guide
Above Top Left: Kent, £1.4 million guide
Above Left: Hampshire, £365,000
guide
Above Right: North Devon,
£495,000 million guide
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