The UK housing market back in business

The housing market took its first steps towards returning to business last week, as housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, published new Government advice on home moving during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. This guidance provides much-needed public health information for both the industry and homebuyers, to ensure that moving home and key activities around this can happen safely. A new charter has also been launched by the Government and the Home Builders Confederation with health and safety guidance, in an effort to get the construction industry restarted.

It is heartening to see the collective effort and focus from representative bodies across all sectors of the home moving journey and we’re pleased that through our membership of the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI), we played our part in influencing these positive first steps. The discussions and points raised by members via our recent video conference sessions were relayed to AMI, and helped to illustrate the real issues that many of you were experiencing, and your concerns about the coming months.

The Government estimates more than 450,000 buyers and renters had put plans to move on hold since March and the initial reaction since this announcement in the market has been immediate, with Rightmove reporting a 45% jump in visits to its website and viewing enquiries increasing by 70%.

Nicola Amidulla, principal at Nicola Amidulla Mortgages, confirmed that since the Government's announcement, enquiries have materially increased. She comments: "We are now getting 4-5 enquiries each day and it’s having enough hours in the week to keep up with things since the guidance was published. It shows there is certainly pent up demand out there in the market."

This week's announcements do not mean we're back to normal by any means and we still have a long way to go before we have a fully functioning housing market. There are still a number of unanswered questions that the industry continues to wrestle with, such as how lenders are going to support people coming off mortgage payment holidays and the ongoing issue of assessing affordability for furloughed workers.

Against a backdrop of six or more weeks of negative news and a reduction in activity however, as a sector we welcome these changes with open arms. Whilst there are still challenges ahead, this week has seen the first steps towards a revitalisation of the housing market.

To further support our members and their customers, this week, we provided our advisers with a client-facing guide to moving house during COVID-19, summarising the guidance provided by the Government.