Wellingborough Property Market Update – May 2024

The average asking price for the 702 properties for sale in Wellingborough was £275,174 in April 2024. This is a fall of £2,479 (0.9%) from the same month of 2023.

Since I started collecting the data in January 2021, the average asking price has risen from £215,584 to £275,174. A rise of £59,590 (or 27.6%).

As we can see, asking prices are beginning to level out at around the £275,000 mark, with asking prices of sold properties creeping up to £248,919, though this is still £26,255 (9.5%) lower than the average asking price.

Whilst this is quite a significant gap, it’s far less than the peak difference of £62,545 (22.9%) in October 2023.For the past three months, the amount of sold properties has remained relatively steady at 10.4%, 9.3% and 9.8% in February, March and April respectively.

The high I have on record is 14% in the post lockdown market of February 2022, and with interest rates at near 0%.

The lowest being 4.5% just a few months back in December 2023.

My Thoughts

Steadying asking prices and a few months of higher sold rates bode well for the future. I don’t believe that there will be any huge increase in house prices for at least the rest of 2024, nor do I believe there will be any significant downturn either.

However, mortgage rates from some lenders are creeping back up.

At the start of this year, investors were betting the Bank of England base rates could be cut to as low as 3.75% by Christmas.

But it is now thought rates will fall to just 4.5% or 4.75% this year – with the first move expected to come as late as August or September.

Swap rates, which significantly influence the pricing of new mortgage rates, have slightly increased in response to this. As a result, lenders have adjusted the pricing of some of their deals

Additionally, The Office for National Statistics said inflation fell from 3.4% to 3.2%between February and March.

This is a big improvement on the 11.1% peak in 2022 and means affordability may improve.

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.), recently said “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”

If, however, asking prices were to fall by 5%, they would be £261,415 (approximately the same as they were in July 2022)

If they were to fall 10%, they would be £247,657 (equivalent to around November 2021 prices)

Lettings

The average asking rent in Wellingborough rose by £26 last month, from £1,039 to £1,083.

The current asking rent has increased by £195 (22.4%) compared to the same month last year and £362 (51.5%) from when I started collating the data in January 2021.

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

For rental prices to slow down more quickly, there needs to be an increase in available properties and/or the financial burden on landlords via mortgage rates and increased legislation to come down.

Nevertheless, it’s improbable that any changes in the above will be substantial enough to significantly affect overall rental increases.