Market thawing

Sellers coming to market this month increased their average asking prices by 0.2% (+£440).

With new seller prices up by 2.4% (+£5,369) year-on-year, more sellers coming to market, and a new year jump in Rightmove traffic, early indicators offer reasons to be confident that both prices and transaction numbers will see a modest rise in 2013.

Miles Shipside, director and housing market analyst at Rightmove comments:


“Those coming to market this month have taken a pragmatic pricing approach and kept their asking prices pretty much the same as sellers in December, up by just 0.2%. Sensible pricing will help buyer affordability, one of the factors needed to help warm up the market and encourage a recovery from the credit-crunch freeze in transaction volumes. The thaw will also be helped by growing confidence that prices are more likely to go up than down. There is an increasing body of evidence suggesting genuine ‘green shoots’ of recovery after a prolonged period of the housing market bumping along the bottom.”

Adding to the ever growing visibility of property on digital platforms is the growth in use of mobile devices by home-movers. On Christmas Day the proportion of Rightmove’s pages viewed via mobile devices more than doubled compared to normal levels, and has remained high ever since.  This provides an increasingly significant route for sellers’ properties to reach and impress prospective buyers.

Shipside notes:


“Whether more people were searching on the move or just trying out their Christmas mobile gifts at home is hard to say, but how home-movers research their local property market is certainly changing. It means sellers have to be extra mindful of attractive pricing and photography as our research shows the attention span of mobile device users on each property page is shorter, so you have to try harder to make a good first impression.”