Wellingborough Property Market Update – April 2024

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a marketing report, but with the first quarter of the year now behind us, it’s a good time to look back on what has been happening.

In the sales market, the average asking price of all properties for sale in Wellingborough was £274,043. In March last year, they were £277,308 meaning asking prices have dropped by £3,265 (1.2%) in that time.
Since I started collecting the data in January 2021, the average asking price has risen from £215,584 to £274,043. A rise of £58,459 (or 27.1%).

As we can see, asking prices are beginning to level out at around the £275,000 mark, however the average asking price of sold properties are still £37,224 less than the the average of properties that are for sale (£274,043 vs £236,819).
Whilst this is quite a significant gap, it’s far less than the peak difference of £62,545 in October 2023.

The number of properties that have been listed for sale has fallen by 87 (12.6%) from 688 in March 2023 to 601 in March 2024, though the percentage of sold properties has rebounded strongly from the decline it faced over the whole of 2023.

Time will tell if the sales rate will remain high. As it stands, 9% of properties for sale are listed as sold. The high I have on record  is 14% in both March 2021 and February 2022, both in post lockdown markets with interest rates at near 0%.

My Thoughts

If the UK economy as a whole is like a tanker ship, the property market is the back end and reacts the slowest. but we do have some leading indicators that hint at what may be around the corner for us.

Firstly, the banks. They have all the data and information to make decisions around lending and whether they’d like to expand or contract how much they invest.

Santander have very recently announced reductions on selected residential fixed rates by up to 0.24%. It follows cuts by the bank of up to 0.21% at the end of March.

Similarly, TSB has cut selected fixed rates by up to 0.2%. Its five-year fixed rate for home purchase has fallen to 4.29%. (note: please seek independent financial advice).

Furthermore, Clare Lombardelli (currently chief economist of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is due to join the BoE’s monetary and financial policy committees in July, replacing Ben Broadbent.) , said on Tuesday “I’m not going to put a date on when I expect the UK to start the process of loosening monetary policy, but it clearly is the case that that will be the direction of travel for European economies,”

With mortgage rates going down, interest rates and inflation likely to follow, we may see some more affordability come back into the market.

If, however, asking prices were to fall by 5%, they would be £260,341(approximately the same as they were in June 2022)

If they were to fall 10%, they would be £246,639 (equivalent to around October 2021 prices)

Lettings

The average asking rent in Wellingborough saw a steep rise of £98 (10.4%) between February and March this year. This is a continuation of a long term trend.

The current asking rent has increased by £197 (23.4%) compared to the same month last year and £336 (47.8%) from when I started collating the data in January 2021.

Zoopla projects that UK rental inflation will halve to +5% in 2024.

To achieve a swifter slowdown in rental inflation, there needs to be a consistent increase in rental supply.

Nevertheless, it’s improbable that any surge in supply this year will be substantial enough to significantly affect overall rental growth.

Persistent low levels of net-new investment in rental properties imply that the supply will continue to lag behind the norm, thereby bolstering further increases in rent.

*All data sourced from Zoopla Pro