UK property supply falls by 4% in April

The most recent UK Property Supply Index from HouseSimple.com suggests that property supply fell by 4% during April.

According to the report, a combination of poor weather and political uncertainty has put sellers off from marketing their accommodation over the last month.

Factors

Supply dropped by 4% at a time when one would expect the number of new listings to increase.

This could be due to a number of factors, such as the triggering of Article 50, the announcement of the General Election and the particularly cold weather.

The most prominent falls in supply were found in Runcorn, where levels were down by 33.9%. Doncaster also saw significant falls of 31.1%.

In order to compile its Property Supply Index, HouseSimple assessed data from over 500,000 listed properties to see the number of new properties on the market each month. This data looks at over 100 major towns and cities across the UK and across all London boroughs.

Capital Rises

In London, supply increased by 1.5% during April, though there were variances across boroughs. For example, Lewisham saw new listings rise by 76%, whereas Haringey saw supply slide by 21.2%.

Alex Gosling, CEO of online estate agents HouseSimple.com, noted: ‘The property market doesn’t like uncertainty and triggering Article 50 and announcing a snap General Election shortly after is a huge amount of uncertainty for sellers to digest. The good news for the property market is that this Election doesn’t appear to be a close-run affair so it’s likely that any negative impact on the property market will be short-lived.’[1]

‘If the market is a little slower up until the General Election on June 8, then it’s likely after the result is known, there will be a boost in supply, with sellers looking to find buyers before the summer kicks in and everyone heads off on holiday. But if sellers need to move then they shouldn’t hold off until after the Election hoping that market conditions will change radically after the result,’ Gosling added.[1]

[1] http://www.propertyreporter.co.uk/property/property-supply-fell-4-in-april.html