Chiswick’s residential property market has just seen one of its least active quarters since records began. As reported on the local news website
ChiswickW4.com only at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 did transaction levels fall below those seen in Oct-Dec 2017.
To date only 76 sales have been reported to the Land Registry in the three months in the W4 post code area. Over three hundred properties would change hands in Chiswick in a buoyant market. Although it appears to be a London wide issue the decline has been particularly steep in Chiswick.
Local estate agent
Christian Harper at Harper Finn believes that the industry only has itself to blame: “Over the past eighteen months the country has been sailing towards our greatest ever economic perfect storm. These figures confirm that such uncertainty has a direct link to the residential property market, ‘even in Chiswick’, as some Chiswickians would say!
“In truth I think that a great number of Chiswick’s estate agents are partially to blame for such poor activity. They are still over-valuing to win instructions because they are simply too frightened to give realistic prices and lose business to other agents. Some agents are still promising miracles whilst writing thousands of letters stating that they have disappointed buyers!
“After a few weeks of marketing and low to no viewings, the agents ask for asking price reductions. It’s no surprise that the clients are then refusing to lower their price as they are so convinced that their property is worth more - because three estate agents told them so.”
Honesty is the best policy
On average, Christian receives five calls a week from owners with property currently on the market with another agent and looking to change because they haven’t had any viewings. But when he suggests a lower price to enable a sale he meets with resistance: “I think that other agents need to be straight with their clients about the current market situation”.
According to the Nationwide House Price Index, property values in London as a whole fell for the first time in eight years during 2017 down by half a percent. This made it the weakest performing region of the country for the first time since 2004.
Read the full article '
Second worst ever quarter for property sales' including detailed postcode analysis of the Chiswick property market.
What is the view of other local estate agents?
Andrew Nunn at
Andrew Nunn & Associates shares his insights
here.
