Landlords slumped 10% to take them below the pre-Covid 62-week average while tenants remained steady
New vendor and landlord enquiries to estate agents fell significantly in the past week raising concerns a tightening market is adding to an already pressing supply crunch with new sales property listings failing to meet buyer demand, the latest data from the Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) shows.
In the week to midnight Sunday, vendors dropped 13% and buyers were down just 1% to pile yet more pressure onto agents desperately seeking new listings to take to active and motivated applicants. Landlords also slumped 10% to take them below the pre-Covid 62-week average while tenants remained steady.
Activity on estate agent own-branded websites remained exceptionally strong, with the volumes of people visiting 125% higher than the fourth week of lockdown in 2020, and 41% higher than the equivalent week in 2019. In turn, the volume of live chats was 5% higher than last year (14% higher than 2019) and the quantity of leads generated 10% higher than a year earlier (40% higher than 2019).
Yomdel provides 24/7 managed live chat services to 3,800 estate agent offices in the UK, handling more than a 1.9m chats per year. It has analysed the data and leads captured in live chat going back to January 2019, up until week ending 25 April 2021. The website visitor data is a sample across major estate agency groups in the UK and covers more than 51 million unique website visits back to January 2019.
Bright sunny weather and the easing of lockdown is slowing demand for agents, but levels remain significantly above the last ‘normal’ year in 2019. You can’t help but speculate that vendor demand may well be well off its peak and the extraordinary market we’ve seen over the past year, said Andy Soloman, Yomdel Founder & CEO.
For any agents looking for new vendors or landlords the best place to look is online. People are on agent websites 24 hours a day and agents need to use every tool available to them to find ways to engage with these prospective customers as early as possible. This is a new ‘new normal’ where the fittest need superfast at handling leads and offer extraordinary service to thrive, he added.
New vendors dropped for a second week, falling 13.46%, or 20.58 points, to close the week on 132.60, around 33% above the average, 78% higher than the same week last year at the beginning of the initial lockdown, and 16% above the equivalent week 2019.
Landlords dropped 9.55%, or 10.29 points, to 97.46, around 3% below the average, 8% higher than the same week last year, and 6% lower than the same week 2019.
