The media have been full of stories predicting housing market activity will decrease as interest rates rise. Of course that’s a logical forecast but as usual it assumes everything else remains equal. The same forecasters all assumed house prices would fall at the start of the pandemic.
In the real world there are often unexpected events and trends which mean the received wisdom doesn’t actually come to pass. Some of our buyers are actually more motivated to buy now because they think that if they leave it till next year, their monthly mortgage outgoings could be more. House prices are also not just a function of rising or falling demand, – they are also a function of rising and falling supply, and at the moment there are less houses and flats available to buy than there are buyers, so we’re still regularly getting competing bids for the same property. The cost of private education has risen so much over recent years that its much cheaper for a family budgeting for their children’s education to buy a house near a high performing state school, and this factor drives many sales in our area. We also have the special factor of buyers from Hong Kong having identified this area as a great place to invest and/or resettle and this too is adding to demand. So for the moment house prices and market activity remain very resilient in Petersham, Ham and North Kingston.