The provisional seasonally adjusted UK property transaction count for October 2014 was 98,490 residential and 9,400 non-residential transactions.
The seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of residential property transactions decreased by 4.3% between September 2014 and October 2014. This month’s figure is 3.2% higher compared to the same month last year.
The pattern since the beginning of 2013/14 has been of a general month-on-month increase in transactions for the seasonally adjusted data until February 2014, then a gradual decrease followed by a flattening out of transaction numbers. August 2014 saw a peak for recent non-seasonally-adjusted transactions, the highest level since November 2007.
In October 2014, the number of non adjusted transactions has risen compared with September 2014, for residential properties. However, the rise was smaller than in previous years, so the seasonally adjusted figure for October 2014 is lower than in the previous month but higher than in October 2013.
Duncan Kreeger, director of West One Loans, comments:
“The signs have been visible for some time that the property market is starting to cool and this is confirmed by the seasonally-adjusted figures for October which represent the poorest-performing month since last November. We may have progressed since the dark days of the recession, but the foot has certainly eased off the accelerator since earlier this year.
“This highlights the importance of addressing the UK’s undersupply of housing. Buyer demand may have mellowed lately, but there still isn’t a consistent supply of new properties coming onto the market to fuel activity. Construction figures are nudging upwards, but not at the rate required to make real headway and developers need more assistance to conquer the shortfall. Unless something significant is done to help them – or mainstream lenders start following the lead of their alternative counterparts – we will be forever stuck in the groundhog day of improvement followed by bottlenecks.”
