Property Press Online

Post Office Money have recently revealed figures on how long it could take UK homeowners to sell their property.

The latest data regarding homeowners buying and selling their property has been revealed by the Post Office Money. According to the report, property sales have been taking almost two weeks longer than housing sales in 2018. The report states that this is due to the uncertainty within the current politics.

Also, within the report, according to the report, the average amount of days to sell a property within the UK is 114 days.

The report itself was produced with Cebr (Centre for Economics and Business Research), and entailed different lengths of time it took to sell properties in sixty-six of the major cities across the UK.

Slower Sales

One of the least affordable cities to live in, that also has the slowest selling time is Oxford. In Oxford, the average house sale takes around 152 days, and it is also three time more expensive than the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Oxford also has the current title as third for the highest average housing prices; ahead of the city is London and Cambridge.

From the data collected, most of the Scottish cities analyse had proven to be some of the quickest selling areas this year. However, Aberdeen has bucked the trend. According to the data, houses in the Scottish city take around 151 days to sell, which is the UK’s second slowest city. This year, the city has seen a decrease of 6.3% in property, which in turn has made the local economy of Aberdeen very constricted.

Faster Sale Areas

The data exhibited that properties in the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow are the quickest cities to sell a property. In Edinburgh on average it only took homeowners 45 days to sell and in Glasgow, only 47 days. Within both cities, the price of properties has remained affordable compared to other cities in England and Wales. They have also seen a growth in the population making the demand for properties increase. The Post Office Money report also mentioned that for the capital, this short period of time could be due to its popularity for holiday lets.

Awarded third place in the quickest cities to sell a property was Dundee. This therefore means the top three cities are Scottish. The report states that this may be factored by the legal system as the Scottish legal system is different to England and Wales. Within Scotland, the exchange of letters (missives) may make a transaction binding very early on in the process. This doesn’t occur in other countries in the UK. But overall, it means that Scottish sales are less likely to fall through.

Outside of Scotland, the quickest recorded market was in Coventry, England. The report stated that properties within Coventry took around 74 days to sell. The city saw strong housing price growth at the start of 2019; however, the city has seen sale volumes dramatically fall towards the end of this year.