Zoopla, a leading British property search service, has reported a sharp increase in potential buyers’ activity as soon as real estate agents resumed their work in England. According to Sky News, after property views and house moving were allowed on May 13, the weekly growth of Zoopla traffic was 88% and demand got up to 20%.
Zoopla points out that many of the transactions that are now being in progress were agreed upon even before the lockdown, and an increase in activity should be followed by a recession resulted from the economic crisis and the consequences of the coronavirus.
In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where restrictions on the work of real estate agents are still in place, the growth of activity in the property market has not been noticed. In England, the largest growth in demand was reported in Manchester and Oxford, while demand in London is relatively low, the BBC notes.
House sales in April 2020 fell to their lowest levels since records began and ran down to 38,000. Before the outbreak of the lockdown, this figure exceeded 100k transactions per month. The biggest deal during the lockdown was the sale of a house in Westminster to a Russian billionaire for £15m, but an agreement was reached before real estate agencies were shut down due to the pandemic.
At the beginning of 2020, thanks to a more definite Brexit status a property value rise was reported following the drop in prices. The pandemic took its toll on the forecasts for the real estate values in the UK at the end of 2020: analysts say prices will fall further by 5-10%.
