Over
the last month, the Harlow property market has seen some interesting movement
in house prices, as property values in the Harlow Council area rose by 1.5% in
the last month, to leave annual price growth at 16.2%. These compare well to the
national figures where property prices across the UK saw a monthly uplift of
0.42%, meaning the annual property values across the Country are 8.3% higher,
this is all despite the constraining
factors of Stamp Duty changes in the spring and more recently our friend
Brexit.
Looking at the
figures for the last 18 months makes even more fascinating reading, whereby
house prices are 22.3% higher, again thought provoking when compared to the national
average figure of 13.6% higher.
However, it gets more remarkable
when we look at how the different sectors of the Harlow market are performing.
Over the last 18 months, in the Harlow Council area, the best performing type
of property was the detached, which outperformed the area average by 1.64% whilst
the worst performing type was the apartment, which under-performed the area
average by 2.26%.
·
Overall
Average +22.3%
·
Detached
+24.3%
·
Semi
Detached +24.1%
·
Terraced +22.7%
·
Apartments
+19.5%
So what does all this mean to Harlow homeowners and Harlow landlords and what does the future hold?
When I looked at the month-by-month figures for the area, you can quite clearly see there is a slight tempering of the Harlow property market over these last few months. I have mentioned in previous articles that the number of properties on the market in Harlow has increased this summer, something that hasn’t happened since 2008. Greater choice for buyers means, using simple supply and demand economics, that top prices won’t be achieved on every Harlow property. You see, some of that growth in Harlow property values throughout early 2016 may have come about because of a surge in house purchase activity, an indirect result of the increase in stamp duty on second homes from April, thus providing a temporary boost to prices.
However, it may be possible the recent pattern of robust employment growth, growing real earnings and low borrowing costs will tilt the demand/supply seesaw in favour of sellers and exert upward pressure on prices once again in the quarters ahead.
...And Harlow property values, assuming that everything goes well with Brexit, I believe in twelve months’ time we should see values in the order of 6% to 10% higher.