We are now just over halfway through the year and what a turbulent year it has been, who could have predicted all the ups and downs that 2022 has brought? It is, however, a great time to take a look at the housing market and see how it is looking. Using data from Dataloft Inform we will give the ups and downs of the housing market for 2022.
National Growth
According to the data from Dataloft Inform, house prices grew nationally by, depending on the data source anywhere from 8.4% to 13%, with monthly price increases ranging from 0.1% to 0.3%
This shows that, at least for the last 12 months the market remained very buoyant.
Regional Growth
Looking at the picture regionally we can see that it is a bit of a mixed bag with huge growth in house prices seen in Scotland and Wales with a softer increase in England.
The market is expected to soften a little though and some predictions suggest that the annual house price inflation nationally will soften to 3% by the end of 2022.
Average time to sell a property
Further highlighting the buoyancy of the market is the average time to sell a property. According to Dataloft, this has reduced from 51 days in March 2021 to 32 days in May 2022, showing a significant reduction in the time taken to sell a property.
Number of properties for sale
One thing that could be driving these increases in price but also the speed at which properties are being sold is a softening of the number of available properties in estate agents. Back in March 2021 there were, on average 42 properties for sale per agent surveyed, but by May 2022 this had dropped to around 37. Although in isolation this does not seem like a lot, when you look at it nationally it shows a large reduction in property availability
This statistic is compounded by demand for properties still being very high, so a market with slightly less properties available but a higher demand is always going to be strong. Over 109,000 sales took place in May 2022, which is 12% higher than the pre-Covid average (2016-2020). To date in 2022 over 540,000 sales have taken place and market activity remains well above pre-Covid levels (Source: Dataloft Inform)
Mortgages
Mortgage rates were on average 2.08% in May 2022 and of the mortgages approved 94.3% of new mortgage advances in the first quarter of 2022 were on fixed rate deals. This is perhaps a symptom of the rising inflation and subsequent rise in interest rates, resulting in most people wanting to opt for mortgage security.
Rental market
If we take a quick look at the rental market, regionally we can see that rents have increased across the whole of Great Britain with increases ranging from around 1.8% in London to just over 4% in the East Midlands
Based on the information from Dataloft, it is fair to say that the housing market is still very bouyant, sales are up over pre-pandemic levels, house prices are rising and demand is still strong. In the rental market rents are increasing and this is on the back of high demand and a reduction in availability of rental properties as well as interest rates rising.
