New Year to usher in perfect conditions for buying and selling property

Although this month may be spent thinking about turkey and presents, it should also be spent thinking about your property future. If you are thinking about buying or selling a property, now is in fact the perfect time to take advantage of an active and ever-changing market.

Every year, there is a spring rush in the property market as this is traditionally the time of year when us Brits like to move home. However, there are a number of reasons why here at ChimneyPots we believe that 2015’s spring activity is set to take place a few months in advance.

This month George Osborne announced in his Autumn Statement that he was reforming stamp duty rates after 300 years of the dreaded ‘slab tax’. The new rates, which will save 98% of buyers money, have re-injected the feel good factor into Britain’s property market and will also save sellers money as they will no longer have to lower asking prices around stamp duty bands.

What’s more, there is a general election in May, which will cause some jitters and doubt in the market. This means that people looking to buy or sell will be more likely to get their business done before the long run up to the election, starting in March, April time.

Another reason for early business in 2015 is the prospect of an interest rate rise in the second half of the year. And you can read more about that here.

Millions to browse property sites over Christmas and New Year
As well as all the reasons detailed above, it seems the next few weeks will also contribute to an extremely active January. Property portal Rightmove recently issued its traffic figures for last year’s Christmas period which make interesting reading for both prospective property buyers and sellers.
Boxing Day 2013 saw 1.3 million people visit the property website, three times more than the number (500,000+) looking at property on Christmas Day.

The number of visits then rose to more than 1.4 million on New Year’s Day and 2.2 million by the first day back at work in January.

Due to the high numbers of eyes considering their property future over the festive period, sellers who delay marketing their property could miss out on exposure to a huge number of potential buyers.

On top of this, Zoopla says that there has been a total of £3.8 billion knocked off the original asking prices of properties currently on the site, something which is sure to entice even more prospective buyers to property browsing over the coming weeks.

Hopefully this has got your juices flowing and encouraged you to think about your property future. For any advice on selling your property, please get in touch on: 08448 099931. To see how much your property could be worth on today’s market, use our free instant online valuation tool.