South Manchester Housing Market Continues To Prove Resilient

The South Man­ches­ter mar­ket has con­tin­ued to prove resilient in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2008. Despite con­tin­u­al neg­a­tive nation­al media cov­er­age, local areas such as Wilm­slow con­tin­ue to see peo­ple buy­ing and sell­ing prop­er­ty freely.

Despite far­ing bet­ter than most, South Man­ches­ter is expe­ri­enc­ing a slow­er mar­ket in com­par­i­son to recent years. Jack­son Bar­rett & Gass have report­ed an aver­age 9.2% few­er Con­veyanc­ing files opened when com­pared with the com­bined 2006 and 2007 sec­ond quarters.

Yet despite this, the sec­ond quar­ter is actu­al­ly a direct com­par­i­son with 2005 for files opened for the first half of the year.

Sean Bar­row, a local solic­i­tor with 30 years expe­ri­ence of the prop­er­ty mar­ket says ​“The fig­ures can be manip­u­lat­ed to see what­ev­er you want to see. The fact is that the mar­ket is slow­er, but the pre­vi­ous 2 years have been excep­tion­al­ly busy peri­ods. Our fig­ures con­tin­ue to reflect 2005 mar­ket conditions.

Peo­ple are begin­ning to realise that the last 2 years were the very peak of the hous­ing mar­ket. The mar­ket is still in a good condition.”

Despite this appar­ent slow­down, Jack­son Bar­rett & Gass have opened 2% more files in the 2008 sec­ond quar­ter, when com­pared to the first quar­ter, and 2.2% more when com­par­ing first halves in 2005 & 2008.

Sean com­ments ​“Again these fig­ure may not look sig­nif­i­cant, but in the con­text cre­at­ed by the nation­al media, these are extreme­ly positive.

Jack­son Bar­rett & Gass have also seen a sig­nif­i­cant increase in their Home Infor­ma­tion Pack ser­vice, which points to con­tin­ued move­ment in the local hous­ing market.

So what now for the local prop­er­ty market?

“We have still yet to see deci­sive action made by the Gov­ern­ment. Hope­ful­ly we will see some mon­ey put into the sys­tem, or more pres­sure put on the lenders to either lend more, or pass on the ben­e­fits of inter­est increases. ”

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