What a start to 2010

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 : Posted by Neil Moore of Guy Leonard & Co

What a start to 2010!
Every estate agent has a right to be nervous about the property market, any business owner that has been through a recession so recently realises how a small change in market conditions can affect your business. So when the snow came at the beginning of January and stayed rather too long (unless you are 12 years old when it was not long enough) the phones understandably stopped ringing. I heard myself say ‘don’t panic, if we get better weather the market will improve’. However I think much of my concern is unfounded; we registered more buyers in January 2010 than in January 09 and arranged more viewings on less stock (levels of housing stock have halved since January 2009).  A reflection that the buyers that are out there who made the effort to view homes, were serious.

This year there will be a lack of supply of new properties coming to the market in the first half of the year but much more choice in the second half. We are now starting to see a number of new instructions coming to the market (not enough I hasten to add) some of them very special homes indeed many of them will benefit from the exposure we will give them at our London property exhibition on the 22nd March for one week.

Horsham Office is seeing a start to activity but it was quite delayed in comparison to Storrington and Pulborough Offices. The launch of our updated web site has already proved to be very beneficial with larger photographs it has made it easier for people to navigate and get the best from the site in fact activity has increased by 58% in the last 3 weeks.

So for now we are confident about this year’s market, for whatever reason people will always want to move so an election year will make very little difference to the housing market.  Mr Brown and Mr Cameron are not going to be able to make great changes to our lives for the foreseeable future; politics is boring at the moment. Maybe if we were voting for Barrack Obama the country would stir its self into action but alas it is only Brown or Cameron that stands a chance of being the next Prime Minister and I do not think either will change the economy sufficiently or be as strong willed as Obama.