August's seasonally adjusted figure is 2.6% lower compared with the same month in 2017.
The number of non-adjusted residential transactions was about 12.9% higher compared with July 2018 and 8.8% up against the same month a year ealier.
The provisional seasonally adjusted UK property transaction count for August 2018 was 99,120 residential and 10,240 non-residential transactions.
Alex Depledge, CEO and Co-founder of Resi.co.uk comments: “The property market is still waiting for a kiss of life as activity remains flat. The issues plaguing the market remain a concern for both prospective buyers and sellers, whilst Brexit uncertainty has added to the worries of property developers and builders. All eyes will be on the Conservative party conference where the government must give some indication of plans that will fix the housing market.”
Jeremy Leaf, north London estate agent and a former RICS chairman, says: "Once again it’s the number of transactions and the pace of change which is much more relevant to testing the strength or weakness of the UK property market than house prices. These numbers show that the patient is in reasonable health and has taken the interest rate medicine in its stride, showing activity holding up reasonably well and even progressing marginally compared with previous months.
The market enters the important autumn period with reasonable confidence, not expecting any great changes either way. On the high street we have noticed more interest in buying and selling, although we are finding it hard for deals to gain traction unless there is realism on all sides."
Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, says: "As we leave the glorious summer behind us and move into autumn, the signs are promising for a decent end to the year. Despite a well-anticipated rate rise in August and ongoing concern around Brexit, many people are still getting on with making decisions and buying and selling property. This is helped by lenders with an obvious desire to lend in the run up to the end of the year, offering fixed rates in particular at competitive levels.
Buy-to-let has been hit hard with tax and regulatory changes but it is proving to be fairly resilient. While there has been a noticeable drop in novice landlords, many experienced investors continue to add to their portfolios. Remortgaging numbers have significantly increased as landlords opt for fixed rates to protect against further potential rate rises, or shift to another lender because their own is no longer active. We are also seeing a number of landlords change the way their asset is owned, moving it from their own name into a company, which generally requires refinancing.
Remortgaging is also popular on the residential side, with lenders offering competitive products and incentives such as cash back. With many borrowers keen to protect themselves from further rate rises, there are still some excellent short, medium and long-term fixed rates to tempt them."
Mike Scott, chief property analyst at Yopa, says: "HMRC data shows an increase in house sales in August compared with July but a 2.6 per cent decrease compared with August 2017.
This continues the trend of housing market activity in 2018 running slightly behind 2017, with 2018 likely to have the slowest-moving market since 2013, with a little under 1.2 million house sales in total.
However, that said, it will still be well ahead of the years from 2008 to 2012, in the aftermath of the 2008 credit crunch."
Russell Quirk, founder and CEO of Emoov.co.uk, commented: “Despite today’s prophecies of the five mini horsemen of the property apocalypse dragging the market down, both yesterday’s house price data and today’s transactions figures paint a slightly different story.
Since the beginning of the year property transactions have slowly but surely risen from the ashes with August recording the highest level of monthly sales since the start of 2017, bar just one month.
When removing any influences due to seasonality, transactions levels have also recorded a monthly uplift and have remained consistently strong so far this year, while only marginally off the pace when compared to last year.
Although we may well see things start to unwind from now until December, forecasts of a category five housing market demise have most definitely been revised to a category two at worst.”
