Taylor Scott International News
Bristol is the most searched city for property hunters in the UK, followed by Cambridge, according to new research from online property portal Rightmove. Margate has seen the highest asking price hikes and Welwyn Garden City is where properties have sold the quickest with March the busiest month of the year in terms of browsing for real estate. There were 110 million visits from home hunters each month to Rightmove in 2015, as demand for property hit an all-time high and supply issues in many parts of the country remained. Whilst the busiest month was March, the busiest day for browsing property was actually later in the year on Monday 10 August when home hunters browsed over 58.6 million pages of property, a common time of year for people to try and find a new home to be settled in before Christmas. Bristol and Cambridge came first and second for potential buyers and renters searching for property in 2015 outside London, with almost 14 million searches in these two places over the year. York was in third place for buying and Manchester came third for rental searches. Commuter towns Milton Keynes and Reading made the top 10 searches for both renting and buying, perhaps as people looked for more affordable options outside of the capital. Some areas fared particularly well in 2015 outside London, with new seller asking prices in a few locations going up by more than 20%. The seaside town of Margate in Kent saw the price of property coming to market go up by 24.2% to £204,631 between January and the end of November, followed closely by Altrincham in Cheshire with a rise of 21.9% to £484,258. The rest of the top five is made up of towns in Kent with Gravesend recording a rise of 20.5%, Ramsgate up 18.6% and Dartford up 17.4%. The average time for a property to sell across England and Wales was 62 days throughout 2015. Properties in Welwyn Garden City sold fastest outside London, spending an average of only 25 days on the site before being marked as sold, with nearby Hertford coming in second place with an average of 26 days. Places in the East of England dominated the top 10 fastest to sell list, as many parts of the region recorded strong growth. As the year ended, the annual new seller asking price increase in the East of England is 9.2%, recording the same rise as the South East. ‘2015 saw demand reach record levels for home hunters both buying and renting, and the ripple effect from London to the South East moved even further out to places like Essex and Hertfordshire, as you can see from how quick properties are selling in these locations,’ said Rightmove’s housing expert Sam Mitchell . ‘Usually January is Rightmove’s busiest month but the New Year rush stayed even longer this year, and we recorded our busiest ever month in March. It’ll be interesting to see… Taylor Scott International
Taylor Scott International, Taylor Scott
