Sheffield property: City estate agents experience one of biggest drops in sales outside London, says report

Despite a booming housing market nationally, estate agent businesses in Sheffield are amongst the highest areas outside of London to have experienced a drop in sales transactions, due mainly to a chronic housing shortage.

Leading property data and estate agent prospecting platform Homesearch.co.uk analysed its property data to find out which agents, by postcode area, have experienced the best or toughest market conditions.

It found that estate agents in Sheffield have seen a 17.3 per cent fall in year-on-year sales volumes, ranking them in sixth position in the top 10 lowest performing areas out of over 100 major postcodes analysed.

This compares to Harrogate in Yorkshire which is the best-selling area for agents outside of the capital and has experienced an 11.5 per cent increase in sales transactions for the same period.

The following outlines the wider national picture and which estate agents have seen the lowest increase in sales volumes outside of London, largely due to the decline in sellable housing stock:

1. Wigan: -22.2 per cent (854 homes)

2. Telford: -21.9 per cent (623 homes)

3. Manchester: -19.2 per cent (2,472 homes)

4. Durham: -17.9 per cent (669 homes)

5. Preston: -17.6 per cent (1,307 homes)

6. Sheffield: -17.3 per cent (2,810 homes)

A key part of the study was to identify which postcodes are the most and least lucrative to estate agents. Sheffield ranked 28th nationally, with over £2.8b of property sales generated by agents in the city in the last 12 months.

The research found that Sheffield estate agents have benefited from an 9.21 per cent – £17,617 – increase in average house prices year-on-year. This rise ranks the city in 88th position nationally in terms of the size of the price increase, with 96 per cent of areas having seen an uplift in sale prices.

Speed of sale is also key to estate agent businesses in Sheffield, with local properties taking 42 days on average to sell subject to contract from the date they went on the market. This compares nationally to Slough where properties take 71 days to sell – the slowest time period outside of London.

Sam Hunter, co-founder and chief operating officer at Homesearch, said: “It’s very clear from our data that the housing market in Sheffield presents one of the toughest battle grounds for estate agents outside of London.

“At a time when the national picture is buoyant and house prices have risen significantly in the last 12 months, the challenge facing agents in Sheffield is mainly due to a chronic shortage of sellable housing stock, with 29 buyers on average competing for every one property on the market.

“Local agents will clearly have to work harder than ever to stimulate the market and win new instructions if they are to address this sizeable drop in sales transactions.”

Homesearch enables estate agents to generate new leads and win more instructions and is now the go-to prospecting solution for established market leaders such as Knight Frank, Hamptons, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward.

For further information visit Homesearch.co.uk.