There is a conversation happening across the property industry at the moment that is worth examining carefully before it takes hold as received wisdom. Viewing numbers this autumn are down on the same period last year. Transaction volumes have eased. And in certain quarters, the whispers of a faltering market are growing louder.
My view is that those whispers miss the mark considerably, and that the agents amplifying them deserve more scrutiny than the market they are describing.
Let me be direct about what is actually happening. There has been a material slowdown in viewing rates this autumn compared to last. That is a fact and there is no point in pretending otherwise. But context matters enormously here, and the context is being consistently ignored in favour of a narrative that suits agents who have spent the past few years doing very little beyond standing in the path of a market chock-full of relentless buyers and taking the credit for it.
Any easing in this market is happening from a record high. Prices across Greater Glasgow and the West of Scotland remain at historically exceptional levels. Premiums are still being paid, and in the key pockets of East Renfrewshire, Jordanhill, East Dunbartonshire, and wherever top-tier schooling remains the primary driver of demand, sellers should still have every expectation of achieving a strong price.
The structural forces underpinning those markets have not changed. The schools are still there. The catchments are still coveted. The buyers who need to be in those areas still need to be in those areas.
What has changed is the temperature. Not the fundamentals.
“That is not a market in trouble. That is a market finding a more sustainable equilibrium.”
“That is not a market in trouble. That is a market finding a more sustainable equilibrium.”
Here is the part of this conversation that is not being had loudly enough. A slight softening in achieved prices, from a record high, let us remember, may actually be one of the most useful things that could happen to this market right now.
We know from first-hand experience that a meaningful number of sellers have held back over the past couple of years not because they did not want to move, but because the market was asking too much of them on the purchase side. The value in selling was being partially or entirely negated by what they would have to pay to buy. For those sellers, the calculation simply did not stack up.
A modest correction in purchase prices changes that calculation. It brings sellers back to the table who have been sitting on their hands for two years. It increases available stock. It creates movement in a market that, for all its strength, has been constrained by a supply problem that relentless buyer demand alone could not solve.
A market correction, if we want to call it that, might turn out to be the catalyst this market has quietly needed. More stock, more realistic purchase prices, and a healthier balance between the number of motivated buyers and the number of homes available to them.
That is not a market in trouble. That is a market finding a more sustainable equilibrium.
“The market is not softening in any way that should concern a well-advised seller.”
“The market is not softening in any way that should concern a well-advised seller.”
None of which means that every seller should simply arrive at a closing date and expect the same outcome they would have achieved eighteen months ago. The buyers are still there, but they are more considered. They are less likely to throw caution to the wind in a bidding situation simply because the fear of missing out has reached fever pitch. They are making decisions with more care and more information than they were at the height of the market.
That requires something from the agent that the last few years have not always demanded. Genuine pricing intelligence. Active and considered buyer management. The ability to build a compelling case for a home rather than simply opening the door and stepping back. For agents who have built their model around a market that did the heavy lifting on their behalf, that is an uncomfortable adjustment.
For agents who have always understood that the market is not a substitute for doing the job properly, it changes very little.
The market is not softening in any way that should concern a well-advised seller. What it is doing is separating the agents who were genuinely good from the ones who were simply lucky. That is, on balance, a healthy development.
The water is fine. The question is who you trust to take you in.