Welcome to our April 2023 Homemover Pulse where we take the pulse of the present UK property market and give a snapshot of current homemover activity.
With the UK’s largest and most sophisticated homemover database, we have unique access to data on house prices and residential property at every stage in the purchase journey. Here’s the latest update on the UK’s housing market.
Property Market Summary April 2023
- New Instructions: 587,605
- Sold Subject to Contract: 374,280
- Completions in the last three months: 197,245
UK House Price Growth
The average house price for a property in the UK is £287,880. This is a 1.6% increase in the average price since last year.
According to the Halifax House Price Index, “...Overall these latest figures continue to suggest relative stability in the housing market at the start of 2023 and align with many other recent industry surveys and data.”
The full report is available here.
The current state of the owner-occupied housing market: April 2023
587,605 properties are currently on the market across the UK. This is 36,393 more than highlighted in our March Pulse.
There were also 21,218 more properties sold subject to contract than in March (374,280 compared to 353,062). However, only 197,245 properties have been exchanged, compared to 232,068 in March.
Below, the key stages of the home buying process have been broken down by stages and region.
Current new instructions
Our new instructions data covers all residential properties in the UK that are currently available for sale. At the time of publication, there were 587,605 residential properties available for sale across the UK.
Continuing the trend we have throughout 2023 so far, the South East still dominates with the most new instructions. With 95,463 new properties coming onto the market in this region, this is also the highest number so far this year.
Comparatively, Northern Ireland still has the least number of new instructions, although April has been a stronger month for Northern Ireland, beating out new instruction numbers in January, February, and March of 2023.
Current properties with sales agreed
Our sales agreed data covers all properties in the UK which are sold subject to contract and are currently on the conveyancing journey heading to completion. Sale agreed figures can be seen as an indicator of present demand, showing where people are currently in the process of moving. At the time of publication, there are 374,280 properties across the UK that have sales agreed.
Once again, the South East is seeing the most activity with 60,702 properties sold subject to contract. The North West also saw a considerable amount of properties with 41,215, listed as sales agreed. A close runner-up, the East of England had 40,942 properties sold subject to contract in April.
Northern Ireland almost surpassed January’s activity, with 11,290 properties listed as sales agreed. It outperformed February and March, which had 10,846 and 10,712 properties reach the sales agreed stage of the buyer journey respectively.
Completions in the last three months
Our completions data covers all residential properties in the UK which have undergone contract completion in the last three months. Therefore this data set covers all homes which have been newly purchased and moved into. In the three months to April 2023, there have been 197,245 contract completions across the UK.
Of the 197,245 completions, the South East was the highest performer. Yet there were slightly less completions in this region compared to our March Pulse data with 30,959 compared to 37,178.
There were also fewer completions in Northern Ireland compared to other months in 2023 so far.
Nick McConnell, Commercial Director at TwentyCi says of the latest data:
“The property market has demonstrated a robust performance against significant and determined headwinds. Significantly, nearly 70% of all properties listed have sold so far in 2023, in an environment where prices are still 24% above pre-pandemic levels”.