Just what is happening in the property market is often the greeting that anybody involved in the property market is met with.

From our point of view, we don’t “sell” houses, we find the people to buy and as such our take on the market has often been regarded as a little more subjective(!)

The universal message we seem to be receiving at the moment is that there is a shortage of quality property coming onto the market and in certain sectors of the market, demand is exceeding supply. The general consensus of opinion is that due to a long winter and a particularly cold March, vendors weren’t tempted to get their houses ready for the spring market. Now that summer is here, it seems that more houses are coming onto the market within the next couple of months and doubtless this will be reflected in the thickness of Country Life which can often be a useful yardstick as to the general availability of property! The other question we are often asked is “Is now a good time to buy?” to which the answer very much depends on the individual circumstances.

What is often forgotten is that providing one is buying and selling in the same market place, the gap between what one is selling for and one is buying for will remain reasonably consistent. The “When to Buy and When to Sell?” questions become more relevant perhaps when purchasing or selling a second home.

From our perspective, we feel that during the last five or six years, the UK property market has adjusted to low interest rates – whilst this adjustment was taking place, many people were able to borrow more money for less cost and this fuelled the property market. Such fuelling appears to be for the most part over and the days of double-digit annual growth are hopefully behind us and more consistency is returning to the market.

Naturally, there will be exceptions to the rule. All of us here are people who have had to drop the asking price of a property. This isn’t so indicative of a falling market, but probably more to do with the fact that the property was overpriced at the outset and the number of properties actually transacting at a lower figure than they were being purchased at a year of so ago are very few and far between.

Well located, period country houses are, for a family move, what we find to be in greatest demand and there is absolutely nothing to suggest that such demand is going to falter.

If there are any specific aspects about the property market that you would like to discuss either generally or specific to an individual area, then we shall be delighted to hear from you.