So, what’s happening in the Medway housing market right now? Reports from Rightmove in August may lead their audience to believe house prices are dropping. However it’s the average price of properties coming to the market that actually dropped. This could simply be that more higher end properties came onto the market than in the previous month. They also suggest that this could be a result of the usual August slowdown and not directly impacted by an increase to interest rates. The 1.3% drop sits on trend with the 10 year average of properties coming to the market in August. Albeit slowing, house price growth is still positive at 8.3% according to Zoopla. The things with house prices is that they are very hard to track, unless you list the exact same property for sale every 6 months to see what it achieves. Sold/Completion prices are 3 to 4 months old, prices that properties are on the market for are not the prices they sell for. In August, just over 3500 properties were available for sale in Medway, 200 less than in July. This will have been due to the record number of properties listed for sale and sold during July, numbers not seen since early 2021. 1242 properties were listed for sale during August vs 1346 in July. More properties were sold in August than in any other month in 2022. This is proof that the market is still buoyant and sales are still being agreed despite mortgage rate rises. So if you are a seller and wondering if it’s still a good time to put your property on the market in Medway then demand for your property is still high. I would strongly recommend selling your property now if it’s a prime first time buyer property, these are the buyers that will effected the most with the rise of mortgage rates. The amount of properties being reduced increased by 6 in August vs July. More and more properties are being reduced that are on the market so if you are putting your property on the market, listen to the advice from your estate agent and be realistic. It’s better to have offers that you can reject rather than having no offers at all. One things for sure, there’s never a bad time to sell a property, there’s just a bad time to sell. This month Rightmove celebrated 20 years of their house price index, records show the average property asking price has increased by 134% over those 20 years. Thank you for reading and if you have any questions what so ever about the Medway property market, help with buying a property or would like me to represent you as your selling agent then please get in touch, I’d love to help.