The number of homes coming to market across our operating area is down approximately 7% on the same period last year. Supply has contracted meaningfully. Against that backdrop, a viewings decline of less than 3% does not indicate a softening market. It indicates a market with fewer homes to view, and buyers who are competing harder for the ones that are available.

The offers tell the real story. In the year to date, Corum has received 4,460 offers from buyers. In the same period last year, that figure was 4,358. Offers are up 2.3%, in a market where available stock is down 7%. The buyers are not retreating. They are, if anything, more concentrated and more committed than at this point last year.

That is not the hallmark of a slowing market. It is the hallmark of an exceptional one.

If our own figures make the case internally, the wider price data makes it externally, and it does so with considerable conviction.

Every area in which Corum operates is outperforming the Scottish national average on price growth. Scotland itself is outperforming England and Wales. The markets our clients are selling and buying in are, by any meaningful measure, among the strongest performing in the UK.

East Dunbartonshire has recorded one of the strongest rates of house price growth in Scotland, with values up approximately 6.4% year on year, more than double the Scottish average of 2.8%. East Renfrewshire, one of the most expensive local authority areas in Scotland, continues to grow on an already high base, and for premium sellers, annual growth of 3.3% on that high base is where real commercial significance lies. Across Ayrshire, sold prices are up 5.9% year on year, with South Ayrshire’s detached market, the segment most relevant to Corum’s client base, recording growth of 8.4% annually according to Rightmove data. Ayr itself has seen sold prices rise by 9% year on year, nudging above the 2023 market peak. Across the board, the areas we work in are not merely holding their own. They are leading.

For clients whose homes are priced well above the market average, as the majority of Corum’s instructions are, these figures carry particular weight. Average prices tell a broad story. Percentage growth on a premium asset tells a rather more compelling one.

Across key pockets of Glasgow, Ayrshire, and the wider West of Scotland, we are seeing record sales, closing dates attracting strong competition, and buyers approaching the market with a conviction that bears no resemblance to the picture being painted elsewhere. The West End, the Southside, Bearsden, Newton Mearns, the Ayrshire coast, in each of these markets, serious buyers are active, motivated, and moving decisively when the right home appears.

There are nuances, as there always are. The more niche markets at the very top end, and certain rural pockets, require a more considered and carefully calibrated approach. Presentation, pricing, and patience matter more in those markets than in the mainstream. That is not a new observation, it has always been true, and it does not constitute evidence of a market in retreat.

What it constitutes is the normal, healthy complexity of a mature property market. Not every home sells in a week. Not every closing date attracts six offers. But the active buyer pool across our market is as deep as it has been, and the results we are delivering for clients reflect that.

It is worth being direct about something. There is a version of the current narrative that has less to do with market conditions and more to do with the consequences of a pricing strategy that has run its course.

Agents who have spent the past few years aggressively overpricing homes, winning instructions with inflated valuations and then watching those homes stagnate, are now encountering a market that is no longer willing to absorb that approach. Buyers have not disappeared. They have simply stopped making allowances for homes that are not priced correctly. That is a meaningful distinction, and conflating it with a broader market slowdown is, at best, a misreading of the evidence. At worst, it is a convenient way to reframe poor advice as external circumstance.

A market that punishes overpricing is not a slow market. It is a functioning one.

The buyers are there. The demand is real. The price growth across every area we operate in confirms it. The results, for the homes that are brought to market correctly, continue to be exceptional. This is a market that agents should be championing to their clients – with confidence, with evidence, and with the kind of honest advice that puts the client’s outcome ahead of the instruction.

That is certainly the approach we are taking at Corum. The data supports it, the results confirm it, and the buyers we are working with every day demonstrate it.

The market did not get the memo about slowing down. We are fairly confident it does not intend to.