Rightmove alerts have gone very quiet this week, which is not surprising given it is the 23rd of December, but I was struck by just how dead things look locally. Not a single new listing in the New Forest area since Friday. Two properties near me that were reduced last week have vanished entirely, presumably withdrawn rather than sold given the trajectory. The agents’ offices in Lymington all had early closing signs up when I cycled past this morning.
I suppose the interesting question is what January looks like. If the rate cut plus the seasonal asking price drop genuinely draws people in, we should see a burst of new listings in the first couple of weeks. Or it will be the usual trickle of stuff that failed to sell before Christmas reappearing with new photos and an identical price.
Happy Christmas to anyone still reading this forum instead of wrapping presents. I am using it as an excuse to avoid the allotment, which needs attention I am not prepared to give it in this weather 
Dead as a doornail round here too. Not even a price reduction to liven things up. The To Let board two doors down has acquired a small wreath, which is a nice touch I suppose. Happy Christmas Eve, @greenwhistle_hants. 
The funny thing about the Christmas dead zone is it is actually quite useful if you are looking, because anything that is still being actively marketed right now is being marketed by someone who really, really needs to sell. Nobody instructs an agent to keep the listing live over Christmas for a laugh. I remember when I was trying to shift my flat, my agent more or less said they would be switching the phones off from the 23rd to the 2nd and anything that came in would be dealt with in the new year, which filled me with confidence. The January rush is the thing to watch, I think. Last year there was a big spike in new listings in the first two weeks of January and most of them were properties that had been quietly withdrawn in the autumn being relisted at lower prices with new photos. Same house, fresh lipstick. I wonder if we will see the same again given the rate cut has given agents a nice new talking point for their vendor letters.
Happy Christmas all. The wreath on the To Let board two doors down has blown off already. Felt symbolic somehow
Wreath is back on. Someone must have been out early. Still no viewings, still no sign of life. Boxing Day walks and leftover turkey round here, not house hunting.
Somebody is working though, because a property on my Rightmove alert just got a Boxing Day price reduction. A bungalow on the Lymington road, dropped from £425k to £399k. I suppose the agent scheduled it in advance to catch all of us sad cases who check the app between helpings of cold ham.
I did my usual Boxing Day cycle this morning and the high street was predictably deserted, but the charity shop had a queue outside at 9am. Make of that what you will. The housing market may be asleep but the secondhand book economy is booming.
PS. @halfpenny_doris, glad the wreath survived. A small victory for the season.
First sign of life round here today. Somebody was measuring up the front garden of the empty house on the corner. Estate agent or builder, couldn’t tell from the window.
@halfpenny_doris, mystery solved perhaps. If they were measuring up the front, my money is on a builder pricing a conversion rather than an agent. Agents just take photos and leave.
Still nothing new on my Rightmove alerts. Saw that nationally asking prices dropped 1.8% in December which is steeper than the usual seasonal dip. Feels about right from what I am seeing locally. The bungalow I mentioned on Boxing Day is still sitting there at £399k with no takers.
The interesting week is always this one, the bit between Christmas and New Year where nobody is quite sure what day it is and estate agents are supposedly closed but the price reductions start trickling through on Rightmove anyway. I have been idly scrolling this morning, partly out of habit and partly because there is nothing on television, and in my old patch alone there are four new reductions since Boxing Day. One of them has been reduced twice in three weeks which suggests the vendor is either panicking or the agent priced it badly to begin with, and I know which one my money is on. The Halifax numbers showing a 0.6% monthly drop feel about right for what I am seeing, which is basically a market that wants to move but can not quite agree on what things are worth. January is going to be fascinating, or at least as fascinating as property listings can be, which admittedly is a low bar.
Well, that is 2025 done then, and the Halifax numbers this morning make for a suitably deflating end to the year, a 0.6% monthly drop in December which is the biggest fall since August 2023, though you would not know it from the headline writers who are still leading with “prices up 2.4% annually” as if that tells you anything useful about what is happening right now. I have been sitting on my BTL sale proceeds since June and every month I tell myself the right opportunity is just around the corner, and every month I find another reason to leave it in the savings account earning 4.7%. The truth is that January listings always feel like a fresh start but half of them are just the same properties that failed to sell before Christmas with a new set of photos. I wonder how many of the Rightmove price reductions @greenwhistle_hants has been tracking will quietly get relisted as “new” in the first week of January.
Happy new year all. Went for a walk this morning and the estate agent boards are looking properly forlorn in the drizzle. Three properties on the main road through Brockenhurst still have the same For Sale signs they had in November. One of them has developed a lean, which feels like a metaphor for the whole market round here.
I did notice the annual Halifax figures from yesterday are showing 2.4% growth nationally, which sounds respectable until you remember that half of that is the South East doing the heavy lifting while everywhere else barely moves. The New Forest is not the South East in any meaningful sense despite what the postcode suggests, so I take those numbers with a large pinch of salt.
Still, another rate cut in the bag, four this year, so we start 2026 at 3.75%. Maybe that will shift some of the stale stock once the agents reopen next week. Or maybe not
Happy new year @greenwhistle_hants, and to everyone else still checking in here on a bank holiday, which probably says something about all of us. The thing that keeps nagging at me about the rate cuts is that we have now had four of them, a full percentage point off since the start of last year, and the market still feels like it is wading through treacle. I sold my BTL back in the spring and at the time I thought I would probably reinvest within six months once rates came down a bit more. Here I am eight months later still sitting on cash in a Marcus account watching it earn less and less as the base rate drops. The buyers are not coming back with any urgency and the sellers who are serious have already cut their prices, and the ones who are not serious are just going to sit there with their leaning For Sale boards until they get bored. I am starting to wonder if 2026 is going to be any different or if this is just what the market looks like now.
First Saturday of the new year and the agents are stirring. Walked past the Winkworth window on the high street this morning and they have reshuffled the display, couple of new ones in there including a bungalow on Lyndhurst Road that I am fairly sure was withdrawn back in October. Recycled stock dressed up as fresh listings, which feels about right for early January.
The thing I am watching now is whether the 3.75% base rate actually feeds through to asking prices or just emboldens sellers to hold firm. The two year fixes coming down is good news for buyers in theory but if everyone reads the same headlines and decides it is time to list at ambitious prices, we are back to square one. The three properties on the main road I mentioned on New Year’s Day are all still there, boards looking no less forlorn in the Saturday drizzle
Same here. The house three doors down got a fresh Purplebricks board over the weekend. Didn’t even know they were thinking of selling.