Mon 09 Sep 2019

written by naomi baron

Land Registry Figures Report Continued Positivity in Home Sales

The Land Registry for England and Wales has released figures for home sales in July.  They make interesting, and extremely positive reading, particularly on top of the overall July housing trends.  We continue to see this in the latest quarter of sales, and it's certainly positive to look back at the official figures as soon as they are released.

Of the (over) 90,000 sales, we can see that there is a definite trend towards come certain types of housing.  For example, new build homes increased by 15.3% compared to July 2018.  Perhaps this is an outcome of the increase in mortgage approvals and the wider range of options available to first time buyers.

The most popular type of property was a terraced home.  25,115 sales were registered in July, which was an increase on 21,721 in June.  We can definitely attest to this at Oulsnams, as our sales teams across all our 11 branches have a large portfolio of period and character terraced homes across the Birmingham suburbs that have achieved swift sale times.

In the £1million and over sales bracket, 697 home sales were registered.  Of course, the majority of these were in Greater London, with the most expensive residential property selling for a whopping £10,450,000 in Kensington and Chelsea borough.  5 of these £1million properties were registered in the West Midlands.

Across the board, the average increase in the number of sales month on month was around 3000.  This is a clear indication that the property industry is not slowing down, and is instead taking the ongoing Brexit discussions in its stride. People are continuing to purchase property and make life decisions based on need, rather than conjecture.