The sooner you sell your home after putting it on the market, the more likely you are to get asking price, but properties in some areas are taking almost a year to be snapped up…
The speed of an area’s property market seems to no longer be subject to the north-south divide that once dominated the sector, with parts of London which might once have seen homes flying off the market seeing a huge slowdown alongside certain locations in Yorkshire.
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New research compiled by Quick Move Now and home.co.uk has ranked the country’s best and worst places to sell a house in terms of how long property spends on the market from first listing to a transaction being completed, and the results show a huge range of timescales across the country.
The best place in the UK to sell a home at the moment is Rainham in Kent, where vendors normally see their properties snapped up within just 87 days. This is closely followed by Bristol where the average time it takes to sell is only 88 days, while in Strood – also in Kent – the average is 89 days, and in Swindon in Wiltshire it’s 90 days. Further towards the Midlands, other areas with a fast turnaround were Northampton (93 days) and Coventry (94 days).
However, it’s bad news for homeowners looking to offload their properties in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, as it has the slowest housing market in the country with properties taking an average of 279 days to sell. In joint second worst place, Knightsbridge in central London and Sunderland in Tyne and Wear both see sellers waiting an average 277 days for their home sales to complete.
According to the figures, it seems that the capital is now on a par with many parts of the north, as homes in Mayfair can spend 272 days on the market, followed by both North Shields and Marylebone at 268 days, along with Soho (266 days) and Charing Cross (265 days).
The implications of a fast or slow market
Properties that get snapped up within the first 12 days of being put up for sale have the highest chance of achieving a top price, according to the HomeOwners Alliance, meaning that the speed of the market can have a big effect when homeowners come to sell.
After four weeks, the final sale price can drop to around 98% of the original asking price, falling to 96% after eight weeks and 94% after three months. Having an accurate and realistic property valuation in the first place is the key to achieving as close to asking price as possible, and this can be based on the speed of the local market in general in terms of buyer to seller ratio, as well as how the house itself compares to local available stock.
Danny Luke, managing director at Quick Move Now, said: “Historically, there has generally been a clear north-south divide between the best and worst places to sell, however, with six of the ten worst places to sell being within Greater London, and the remaining four being in Tyne and Wear and South Yorkshire, that divide seems to be a thing of the past. Even London’s once seemingly untouchable market is suffering.
“When it comes to the best places to sell a property, with three of the top spots, Kent continues to perform well. The M4 corridor is also one to watch, with both Bristol and Swindon featuring in the top ten.”
