property viewings

The housing market has been given the green light to reopen after the Government announced it would lift the ban on property viewings and valuations taking place.

From Wednesday, people will be allowed to travel to visit estate agents, letting agents or show homes, keeping in line with social distancing guidelines. House buyers will also be permitted to view residential properties they wish to buy or rent.

All activities required to facilitate the sale of rental of a home are also able to resume, including property valuers attending properties.

The details were in a statutory instrument that is to be put to Parliament on Wednesday.

Trade bodies including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors have been in discussion with the Government about how property visits can take place while observing social distancing rules.

The property market has been frozen since late March, and more than 450,000 buyers and renters have been unable to move house, according to the Government. There had been concerns that a prolonged shutdown would lead to a loss of confidence among buyers.

However even with the lockdown rules eased, Becky Munday, of Munday’s Estate Agents in south London, said that many sellers would still be uncomfortable with the idea of other people visiting their home.

“I met someone the other day to give the keys for a completion, that was kind of my test run,” said Ms Munday. “She was heavily pregnant, I was observing a physical distance but she wasn’t. It’s about people’s behaviour. And everyone knows that removal men can’t be two metres apart.”

NAEA Propertymark, an estate agent trade body, said it had discussed easing the lockdown rules with the Government. This included proposed guidelines such as limiting the amount of time spent in the property during viewings, wearing gloves and masks, leaving all lights and doors open, and for vendors to wait in the garden or go on their daily exercise.

However, it and other property groups were blindsided by the announcement late on Tuesday evening. Some estate agents were expecting to be able to reopen in June, when non-essential retail may be allowed to open.

Aside from the dangers of physical interactions, there will also be problems with contracts. If buyers exchange and then have to self-isolate, they will break the terms of their contracts. Lawyers are discussing Covid clauses, said Ms Munday, but “it is a bit of a minefield”.

Caroline Takla of The Collection, a buying agency, said that in future buyers could have to meet a list of rules before they are given access to a property for viewings.

“This could potentially range from bringing a mask and gloves to ensuring that sanitiser is used before and after the viewing and that nothing is touched,” she said.

“It’s conceivable that some agents may move towards branding masks and utilising them as new marketing paraphernalia, in much the same way as they already do with, for example, umbrellas.”

The Government also announced further measures to help the industry, including allowing planning applications to be publicised on social media, allowing smaller developers struggling with cashflow to defer payments to local authorities, and allowing building sites to have flexible working hours to stagger timings.

By Adam Williams and Melissa Lawford

Source: Telegraph

An industry group of leading property software businesses, formed by Coadjute, suggests that the UK housing market is likely poised for recovery, with advance bookings for viewings on house sales surging 182% in the last 4 weeks.

The analysis comes from Coadjute’s new Property Market Insights report, compiled with firms including Dezrez, Legal Marketing Services, MRI Software, Reapit, Redbrick Solutions and Search Acumen, and covering over 50% of UK estate agents and a material number of conveyancing firms.

The report is intended to provide breadth and detail on every aspect of estate agent and conveyancer workflow, from initial sales enquiries through to viewings, exchange and completion.

The report confirms that during the period between 2nd March and 5th of April, there was a reduction at the front of the housing sales pipeline, with a 62% drop in enquiries and 83% drop in buyer registrations.

In contrast, the back of the property sales pipeline continued to be strong, with the unusual situation of more transactions moving into exchange and completion than entering at the offer stage.

Now there are signs that the market is already picking up again.

Between 6th April and 3rd May estate agents’ registrations and enquires were up by 45% and 61% respectively, increasing by 18% and 32% in the last week alone.

Significantly, advanced bookings for property viewings saw an increase of 182%, and property offers an increase of 58%.

Coadjute believes that the early return of activity even whilst lockdown continues may suggest that there is significant latent demand for property transactions, with customers anticipating the end of the current restrictions.

That said, it should be noted that these increases are in the context of the unprecedent reduction in activity due to lockdown.

Coadjute’s analysis shows that the number of applicants registered with estate agents and those in the offer stage are still 77% and 87% down compared to activity at the start of March.

Dan Salmons, CEO at Coadjute said, “We are proud to be working with our business partners during the Covid-19 crisis to collect and analyse on the ground activity and trends for the industry and very much hope the data is helpful in aligning their operations for when lockdown finally ends”.

Coadjute is a blockchain property technology business seeking to cut the cost and increase the speed of property transactions by connecting the businesses that power property market operations.

Over the last 18 months they have conducted trials with over 40 leading businesses in the property industry, and are due to launch the network in the UK later in 2020.

Source: Property Industry Eye