PREPARING FOR A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Whatever your take on last week’s Budget, I think we can all agree that it is a relief that it has at last happened, and that the many weeks and months of briefing which has done so much damage to confidence – both in the property market and the wider economy – are behind us, writes Natasha Wright.

In property terms, there was little to affect the market in Norfolk in the Budget, where homes worth over £2 million and therefore subject to the new so-called mansion tax are rare indeed. 

There will be relief that the Chancellor didn’t once again meddle with stamp duty, shying away from the reported suggestion that sellers should be the ones to pay it, and that the overwhelming majority of large family homes have escaped the threatened draconian increase in council tax.

We can now turn our attention to the new year, where we are already starting to see some of that pre-Budget reluctance starting to ebb away.  We have a healthy list of new properties we are preparing to launch after Christmas. 

And we are taking an intelligent approach to timing, eschewing the traditional Boxing Day launches, as study after study has shown that this is not the most effective date to unleash new properties over the festive period.

Yes, traffic to the online property portals is high on Boxing Day, but that does not necessarily translate into viewings.  Boxing Day browsers are not always the serious buyers, and even if they are, the combination of festive excess and the inability to actually view properties over the holiday period means that New Year’s Day is increasingly seen as the best day to launch. 

This is the approach we are taking.  They say that good things come to those who wait, and research shows that 1^st January browsers tend to be more serious about buying, and the fact that they can arrange viewings shortly afterwards is a powerful incentive.

Interestingly, the majority of homes we are launching on New Year’s Day from our county hub are larger family homes, in the £400,000 to £600,000 bracket.  These are precisely the vendors (and indeed buyers) who were most nervous about the Budget, so the fact that we are now able to offer so many such properties suggests that confidence could be returning rapidly now that we finally have some clarity.

No-one can pretend that 2025 has been a vintage year for the property market.  But looking backwards never helped anyone.  Let’s look forward and embrace 2026 as the year when the market will be much more buoyant – starting on 1^st January.