According to recent research, if it wasn’t for the lockdown restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 27% of homes sold in the past year would still be on the market.
It goes without saying that the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have been a testing and troubling experience. But one potential upside seems to be a significant reduction in the amount of money we’ve all been spending.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, our leisure and retail bills have been slashed, helping many of us save more money than we’ve ever been able to before. So much so, in fact, that 27% of homebuyers say they wouldn’t have been able to buy a home without the lockdown, and a huge 46% say that a complete lack of social life has contributed to them now having a foot on the ladder.
It makes sense. Not only are we saving money but many of us are also rethinking our priorities in life. When these two things come together in harmony, many people who would never normally have considered buying a home this year have ended up doing so.
Even more to come?
If we follow this pattern to its logical next step, it seems very likely that a wave of new buyers is about to enter the market. These will be the people who have been able to save money for an entire year now and may have been put off moving sooner because of the potential dangers of a sprawling virus.
But now that we appear to be reaching the end of the pandemic’s most dangerous period, and now that vaccines are being rolled out at speed, we should expect a lot of people to finally feel safe and secure viewing homes, visiting estate agents, and preparing for the next step of their lives.
With 12 months of austerity behind them, their pockets will be deeper than usual so competition for homes may well be strong for the remainder of 2021. Given the severe lack of available homes currently on the market, any further surge in demand is going to force house prices up once again.
