Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker – Slowing new home mover enquiries cool overheated market as landlords buck trend

2 NOVEMBER 2020. New enquiries from vendors, buyers and tenants continued their downward trend in the past week, as landlords rallied significantly to hit a four-week high and coronavirus restrictions were tightened across the UK, the Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) showed.

Highlights (versus previous week):

ALL TRENDS REMAIN UNSEASONABLY HIGH

  • New Vendor enquiries:  DOWN 14% (last week UP 11%)(+14% ABOVE AVERAGE)
  • New buyer enquiries:DOWN 13% (last week DOWN 0.3%) (+7% ABOVE AVERAGE)
  • New landlord enquiries:UP 11% (last week DOWN 4%) (+10% ABOVE AVERAGE)
  • New tenant enquiries:DOWN 6% (last week UP 5%) (-9% BELOW AVERAGE)

Traffic to agent websites 24% above the average, and 44% above the same week last year.

 

Web visits to own-branded estate agent websites remained at record levels, some 44% higher than the same week last year, while despite the overall cooling new vendors and buyer enquires were 32% and 30% higher, respectively. Not to be outdone, Landlords ended the week up 11% and 29% above the same week last year, data up to midnight 1 November showed.

Yomdel provides 24/7 managed live chat services to 3,800 estate agent offices in the UK, handling more than a 1.5m chats per year. It has analysed the data and leads captured in live chat going back to January 2019, up until week ending 1 November 2020. The website visitor data is a sample across major estate agency groups in the UK and covers in excess of 42 million unique website visits back to January 2019.

YOMDEL PROPERTY SENTIMENT TRACKER (w/e 1 November 2020)

Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker – Slowing new home mover enquiries cool overheated market as landlords buck trend

Andy Soloman, Yomdel Founder and CEO, said:

“A new lockdown has been announced for England from 5 November and Wales is in the midst of its own circuit-breaker, but the good news is the government has allowed the property market to stay open. This enables agents to not only progress deals already in the system but to continue building their pipelines during this very difficult time.

“If we learned one thing from the first lockdown in March, people shifted to digital channels in huge numbers. Offices may need to be closed to the public again but websites are open and many people will be at home and online. The smart agents will ensure communication channels such as live chat are available and they are able to offer virtual services.”

 

The YPST methodology establishes a base line average shown as 100% or 100, calculated according to average engagement values over the 62 weeks prior to the lockdown, and plots movements from there according to the volumes of people engaging in live chat, their stated needs, questions asked, and new business leads generated. Data is measured over full 24-hour periods.

New vendors slumped 13.75%, or 17.07 points, to end the week on 114.36, which left them 14% above the pre-covid-19 62-week average and at their lowest level since mid-May. However, they remained 32% higher than the same week in 2019 to buck normal seasonal trends.

Buyers followed suit, dropping 12.99%, or 16.02 points, to close at 107.26, their lowest level since late April in the depths of the first lockdown. However, they remained 30% above the same week 2019 to indicate stronger demand than normal at this time of year.

Landlords recovered sharply, rising 10.93%, or 10.83 points, to finish at 109.91, some 10% above the pre-covid-19 62-week average and 29% higher than the same week in 2019.

Tenants also fell by 5.82%, or 4.68 points, to close at 91.36, some 9% below the pre-covid-19 average but still 8% higher than the same week last year.

 

The following graph looks at the relationship between website visitor volumes, live chat volumes and the volume of leads generated. The data samples over 42 million visitors to estate agent websites from Jan 2019 – 1 November and shows how web traffic to estate agents’ websites (blue line) is 44% higher than the same week last year. The volume of people using live chat (red line) and the numbers of new business leads captured (purple line) are 51% and 55%, respectively, above the same week 2019.

YOMDEL ESTATE AGENT WEBSITE ENGAGEMENT

Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker – Slowing new home mover enquiries cool overheated market as landlords buck trend

 

Kindly shared by Yomdel

Main article photo courtesy of Pixabay