COVID-19: £82bn Property Sales ‘on hold’ amid lockdown

According to analysis of the property market, some 373,000 property transactions are on 'pause' following the Coronavirus lockdown.

Property portal Zoopla estimates the value of these stalled sales to be approximately £82bn.

The full BBC article can be found here.

Kate Penn, Associate and Residential Property Solicitor, comments:

"We would normally expect to be getting really busy at this time of year with lots of house sales and purchasing looking to go through ahead of the summer. Things have not stalled completely but new instructions are certainly down from our normal number.

We also have lots of clients (or clients on the other side of matters) who are ready to exchange but cannot do so until the lock down is lifted or relaxed. Unfortunately we do not know when this will be and obviously clients will have different concerns and attitudes to risk going forward so all parties in a chain will need to manage this.

We have had a number of completions proceed since lockdown started and other files are all prepared ready to move forward. Surveys have been carried out where possible and we have also been able to give clients advice over zoom or other programmes.

So while some files are on pause, we will make sure we are ready to go as soon as we can.