Back to News

Charters Market Update – January 2025

3rd February 2025

• Next

We are pleased to share our first market report for the year. We will be posting these every month the day after inflation and house price data is released, which will give you the most up-to-date information.

January Headlines

• The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 4.75% in the final MPC meeting of 2024.
• Monthly GDP is estimated to have fallen by 0.1% in October, following a fall of 0.1% in September (ONS).
• CPI inflation rose by 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024, down from 2.6% in November. (ONS).
• The average house price rose to £289,707 in November, a 3.3% year-on-year increase (ONS).
• Average new seller asking prices fell by a seasonal 1.7% this month to £360,197, in line with December’s usual monthly fall (Rightmove).
• UK house prices are projected to rise by 2.5% in 2025 (Zoopla).
• There were 92,640 transactions in November, a 12.9% rise compared to a year earlier (HMRC).
• The number of sales being agreed is up by 22% compared to last year’s quieter market (Rightmove).
• There were 65,720 mortgage approvals in November which is 31% higher than a year ago (Bank of England).
• Home buyer demand is up 13% on this time last year (Rightmove).
• Average void periods remained at 21 days in December (Goodlord).
• Rents for new lets are forecast to increase by 4% over 2025 (Hometrack).
• The average rent in December was £1,284, 1.8% lower than November and 1.3% higher year on year (HomeLet).
• Just under 230,000 new homes were built in the year to the end of Q3 2024 . This represents a -7.5% fall quarter on quarter and a drop of -14.4% compared to the same quarter last year (MHCLG).
• There were 273,760 Build to Rent homes completed, under construction or in planning in Q3 2024, a rise of 5% compared to Q3 2023 (BPF).
• In the last 12 months, just over 230,000 units were granted planning permission, the lowest figure for any 12-month period in the last decade (HBF).

South East Prices

It is interesting to see what has happened to values in the South East. This graph looks at values since Jan 2022 and you can see the difficultly last year in terms of values. However, the tide is starting to turn, as you can see in the chart.

 Transactions in England

We’ve looked here at just England. Not only have we had an assault on values in 2024 as per the graph above, but we have also had the least number of transactions over the last 10 years, which show the difficulty in the market.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Spread the news...