Views on The Market

As home stagers, we are all navigating through this uncertain time together. Whether it may be the highs or the lows. 2020 was definitely a testing a year with lockdowns and the tiering system putting blocks in the way and making our job that little bit tricker.

Brexit negotiations in the run-up to Christmas and the ever-increasing Covid numbers have had an impact on the property market of late. We’ve been interested in the views of the property experts who have been busily commenting over the last few weeks and so have done a round-up of these varying views.

Savills have given an interesting insight into the country house market which had been flagging in the run-up to the Covid crisis. Labour intensive grounds, Listed buildings and period houses in need of work were definitely out of favour but as many agents and vendors have noticed, the demand for larger country homes with gardens has been boosted.

Savills’ latest quarterly index shows that a substantial £2m country house has added an average of £111,000 to its value during 2020 whereas a flat or small terraced house of similar value – even in central London – has fallen in value.

“We expect the outmigration trend to continue into the first half of next year too. But usually, as prices in the capital begin to flatline, which we forecast to happen in the second half of 2021, more Londoners decide to stay put. Even so, given the housing market has been anything but normal since the onset of Covid, we expect to see the total number of homes bought by London leavers next year hit 2016 levels.”

We’re all waiting to see what will happen with stamp duty as it now seems unlikely that there will be a full-blown extension to the holiday. The pressure is building on the government to agree on a tapered end to it – a period of grace allowing any property sales which have been agreed and have secured a mortgage approval by March 31 until June 30 to complete their transaction with a stamp duty reduction.

The grace period would exclude new mortgages approved after March 31, and they would not be entitled to a reduction.  Nitesh Patel, strategic economist at Yorkshire Building Society, says: “This is already likely to be a very busy period for lenders and other professionals involved in the house sale process.”

The important message is that house moves can still take place and as long as this can happen, so can we. Agents are in a similar boat and will need your help to prepare their vendors properties for sale. Our vendors have more time to work on improving their home for sale, decorating and completing any outstanding jobs ahead of the staging, so encourage them to use this time and schedule your staging in afterwards.

Our new Stageflow app helps you evidence your staging services to estate agents and vendors. Find out more and signup here stageflow.io.