Vale of the White Horse Property Update March 2018

We have just downloaded the Price Paid data from Land Registry for the March 2018 so it is time for us to crunch the numbers and see what has been happening in the Vale of the White Horse.  As a reminder, the information tends to lag about six weeks behind so we always wait until we have a full and complete month of data. We have now completed 15 comprehensive property reports, all of which can be found on our Blog.

The headline is that there has been a slight dip in prices compared to February 2018 and also a drop in the number of completed sales.  A year on year comparison does however show an increase in prices since this time last year.

Property Prices

The average sold price across all property types, Detached, Semi-Detached, Terraced and Flats/Maisonettes for March 2018 was £391,121.  This is a 3.11% drop on the previous month, however, the year on year comparison is a healthy 8.27% increase.

When reviewing the different property types, we see that the only one to increase in price was Semi-Detached property (9.89%).

Most of the completion activity is taking place under the £400,000 mark with a median value of £372,500.

Sales Volumes

Continuing the theme of reduced completion volumes through 2017, we see a sharp drop for March 2018 compared to the same time last year.  As the below graph shows, 41 completions for the month is considerably below the trend. It is also a 31.67% drop compared to February 2018.

Detached properties were the most popular completions with 23, followed by Semi-Detached (9), Terraced (7) and Flats/Maisonettes (2).

Waymark Comment

Completion levels for March are still low and considerably lower than March 2017.  This is not totally surprising given the low number of new instructions towards the end of 2018 and into the start of 2018.

Buoyant instruction levels for February, March and April should ripple through to more completions towards the end of the second quarter of 2018. New instructions need to be priced keenly and be ready to accept some level of negotiation on the premise that any shortfall can be made up on a successful purchase.