Q. I put my property on the market post Brexit and it has still not sold. I understand there is still some concern as to how the market will pan out once things settle and article 50 is actually triggered but I really didn’t anticipate it still not be sold three months on. My agent is suggesting I reduce the price but I’m not keen, do you think this would really help to secure a sale?
A. Sadly we have seen a definite decline in sales activity since Brexit particularly in London based agency although I note that on the outskirts of London the market seems to be busier than ever. With uncertainty you will always see caution and this is exactly what we have here. Pre Brexit the sales market was in an extremely stable position seeing a nice steady rise in prices and buyer’s confidence was certainly at a new high since the last property slump back in 2008. I believe the tightening up on the lending side of things had certainly injected that confidence back into the market as banks were taking little if any risk when agreeing funding. However and as we are experiencing now, a short sharp injection of uncertainty can turn everything around quite quickly and whilst there are defiantly still deals to be done it is defiantly now a buyers’ market not a sellers. That being said your agent is actually giving you good sound advice. If you want to sell you will need to drop the price. London is London and there will always be interest but at times like this you will naturally see the cash heavy crew looking for something that’s priced to sell. My advice is if you don’t need to sell, remove it from the market and revisit the situation in 12 months once things have calmed down a little and confidence has been restored. If you are trading up or down in this market, then it will make no difference if you drop the price because you will recover the loss on the new purchase when negotiating on that, everyone is in the same position. And finally even if you are not trading bricks for bricks if you really need to sell now ask your agent to advise you what price it will sell at, if you can take the hit then do it, far better to do that than let it sit around on the portals going stale so you end up with little or no interest resulting in no sale being agreed.