Clarification on Todays News

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You may have seen today that some of the major tabloids and news feeds are advertising things like “Don’t Move” and "Property Market Freezes". 

I wanted to give you some clarity to this, which as per normal is the press over egging things and making a small problem potentially worse, so please try not to worry.

The issue comes from the man power at the banks being overwhelmed  due to the huge influx of people getting in touch about payment holidays for their mortgages, this has caused the banks to come out and say they are struggling with the new mortgages and booking valuations.

In addition there is some confusion and concern over how surveyors can carry out valuations. 

The truth is once the mortgage holiday enquires calm down this will disappear, plus there were already over 50% of mortgages being signed off on a desktop valuation before all this happened. 

We will likely see a higher number being carried out as desktop and as our side of the industry have done the surveyors will also just adapt to using technology to look around a house and do their tick list for the banks. 

The facts are simple: 

  • Online activity over all 3 major property portals has increased dramatically as we suspected.

  • This proves the demand for the property is still high

  • If there is a buyer demand for a property, the property will find a buyer.

All we have to do in the short term is utilise the different means of viewings available to us to keep buyer interaction at a good level, something that we are doing and finding works very well.

We have also had government advice regarding property sales that are already progressing with a buyer which I wanted to share with you:

The advice, published under the headline of “Buying and selling homes during this stay-at-home period”, says that agents should “continue to progress sales where this can be done whilst following guidance to stay at home and away from others”.

The Government’s new guidelines say that there “is no need to pull out of transactions” 

Removals firms have been told that they should honour their existing commitments “where it is clear that the move can be done safely”

I will continue to keep you updated and if you do have any specific questions or concerns please dont hesitate to get in touch.