Wee Danny and Danny’s Wee Are Causing Usual Property Market Summer Holiday Slow-Down…
At the beginning of July, the property market sounded a lot like this: “……..”. Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song that would sum it up. Dropping pins were clearly heard by estate agents up and down the country. Tumbleweed was spotted in some branch offices. But meantime…
Parents up and down the country at the beginning of the month were suddenly treated to noises from the back of the car, saying: “Are we almost there yet?”, “I need a weeeeeeeeeeee wee mum”, and “Muuuuuuuuuuuuum, Danny’s hitting me”. For ‘Danny’, substitute any other child’s name. I have no fully-formed theory that children called ‘Danny’ are worse behaved than any others.
Now, I’m no economist, but it would be hard not to imply some relationship between these two things. Every year the same thing happens: the property market ticks along quite happily through the year and then drops off significantly during the school summer holidays. It then starts picking up towards the end of July and gets back into full swing around mid-August.
Even anecdotally, some members of the MOV8 team have all of their children at home all of a sudden and it’s patently obvious that, apart from working and arranging for their children to be kept busy all day, they have little time to think of doing anything else.
So, there you have it, the property market is slow because Danny is hitting his younger brother in the back of the car and giving his parents no time to think or talk about buying a new house because they’re too busy looking for a service station on the A85 for his younger brother to have a wee wee at. Don’t say that these monthly property market updates are not scientific!
So Is the Property Market Picking Up Again?
Yes, is the honest answer. The phones in the office were eerily quiet at the beginning of July compared with the rush in June. However, after a couple of weeks, our volume of work doubled in the next two weeks of July. It looks like things are almost back to where they were in June and are showing no signs of slowing down with all important figures vastly improved and back to normal: numbers of properties coming to the market, number of buyer enquiries and buyers registering on our database and number of offers being submitted and accepted.
It will take a little while to get totally, fully back up to speed, but this movement in the property market should not be unexpected: it’s just that every year rolls around and I hope, in vain, that this year won’t follow the pattern of every previous year when the property market takes a bit of a sudden dip at the beginning of July. I’m always disappointed!
What Is Happening to Property Prices?
I wrote an article on our Blog around the middle of the month because the Press widely reported that property prices were falling and then other articles were reporting property price rises. I wanted to cut through all the noise and slightly misused statistics and give our considered opinion, based on our experience, of whether prices really were going up or down. For anyone interested, this remains my considered opinion on where property prices are heading. To read it, just click here:
http://www.mov8realestate.com/blog/item/84-property-prices-in-scotland-are-they-going-up-or-down?.html
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