Commercial Property Finance News:- The latest figures from HMRC show sales volumes dipping marginally both for residential and commercial properties in 2018.
The provisional seasonally adjusted number of UK home sales in December was 102,330 – a 0.1 per cent drop compared with the previous month. However, this figure was 3.6 per cent higher compared with December 2017.
Glimmer of Residential Hope
Some residential mortgage lenders seized on this as a reflection of the surprise comeback of first-time buyers.
OneSavings Bank sales director, Adrian Moloney, said: “Slowing house price growth, competitive mortgage deals, ‘help to buy’ and stable wage growth has meant that those who were previously locked out of the property market are now able to get onto the ladder. This in turn is starting to help unlock property chains.”
But he added that a shortage of housing stock on the market would hold back a real “uptick” in new purchases.
“Brexit uncertainty, changes to the taxation of landlords and a limited housing stock remain issues for the market to contend with,” he said.
The annual number of residential transactions in 2018 stood at 1,192, 890 compared with 1,223, 410 the previous year.
Commercial Property Finance – Commercial Sales Rally
Commercial property transactions showed a slightly better performance with a total of 11,230 for December 2018. The month’s seasonally adjusted estimate was 5.5 per cent higher than in November and was 5.4 per cent higher than the December 2017.
However, provisional estimates of total transactions in 2018 of 125, 330 is marginally down on 2017’s figures of 128, 520.
Commercial property finance brokerage Hank Zarihs Associate’s chief executive, Shiraz Khan said he was optimistic about 2019.
“We’ve had a healthy number of inquiries for finance from developers who are clearly starting the New Year ready to hit the ground running after successfully selling their units on earlier schemes.”
Industry experts are expecting this year’s figures to be better than last year where severe weather conditions impacted on sales in the first quarter of 2018.