It isn’t hard to see why: landing oneself with a substantial financial commitment at a time when there’s a
disturbingly high risk of the roof falling in is a very bad idea.
However, the housing market is moving in the opposite direction. The latest figures released by property
website Rightmove are striking: they show a 6.1 per cent rise in sales agreed between July 7 and August 10,
with all regions showing improvement when compared to the same period a year ago. The traditional
holiday spell hasn’t been this busy in four years.
Given consumers’ general prudence in the face of the uncertainty created by Boris Johnson and his chums,
this seems counterintuitive. A house is the biggest financial commitment one can make and the
consequences of failing to meet the repayments can be dire.
Yet, prudence may be what’s driving this just as it is the motor market’s slump.
It’s farcical to believe Johnson’s band of incompetents can have us ready for a no-deal exit in time, however
many billions they spaff up the wall
The process a homebuyer has to go through before getting a new set of keys is both tortuous and stressful.
It can take months between agreeing a price and actually making a move and a disturbingly large number of
people are finding themselves stuck in the housing market mud.
Rightmove notes that the number of properties sold subject to contract but mired in legal process log-jams
is at its highest level since June 2014. It currently takes an average of about 105 days between having an
offer accepted and moving into your des res.
A chaotic crash out of the EU is going to screw just about everything up. Just take a look at the leak of
details of the government’s no-deal Operation Yellowhammer. It’s farcical to believe Johnson’s band of
incompetents can have us ready for a no-deal exit in time, however many billions they spaff up the wall in
the process (to quote the man).
Small wonder, then, that buyers have decided that now is a good time to strike, despite the relative
inconvenience of getting the process moving in the holiday season.
If you are in a position of needing to move for whatever reason, it would pay dividends to get everything
done by 31 October. Even those with a little more flexibility who’ve been sitting on their hands may have
decided to accelerate their decision making rather than risk adding truck fulls of Brexit mud to the housing
market’s ready supply of the stuff.
That market has traditionally enjoyed an autumn bounce. Boris Johnson’s Brexit has, it seems, brought that
forward a little. Perhaps we should refer to it as a Boris bounce?
Britons, motivated by the staggeringly reckless the behaviour of the man currently residing in Number 10
Downing Street, not to mention the depressing band of people he has surrounded himself with, are racing
ahead in an attempt to find some certainty in a country that is increasingly losing its marbles. Who’d blame
them?