1
Feb
Niche Market Players
Unfortunately, but we suppose understandably, the media continue
in their commentary to refer to UK as a whole when reporting
economic statistics. This has been most noticeable when commenting
on the housing market. Sometimes reports will refer to the sound
growth witnessed in Central London, most pundits seem to set that
around 12%, they also then reflect on the South East as showing
growth in terms of activity, numbers of transactions and property
values. This is of course is set against the number of UK wide
transactions registered at land registry for 2011 as down by 1%.
However, Hampshire continues to be one of the beacons of light
flickering amidst the very dull illuminations that continue to
shine very dimly over the world economy. Of course it cannot be
said that we have a full steam ahead fuelling a localised recovery
but the upswing is becoming a little more overt each month that
passes. Numbers of transactions have increased, negotiations have
been less severe on value related issues, each property sale is
taking less time to agree and less time to complete. Now the stats
might show that progress is slow but for many of those in the
market at the moment trading conditions are not at all bad. Prices
are holding firm, enquiries are on the increase, more homeowners
have now found a buyer and are able to move forward and that is
giving a kick start to the local market. As for our own
performance, 65% of all of our transactions are cash with no
related sale, this is quite a unique characteristic synonymous only
with niche market players such as ourselves. We are not like our
competitors, our operating model is entirely different, we would go
so far as to say that we deliberately avoid doing what other agents
do because it simply doesn’t work often enough. There appears
to be little point in providing a service that duplicates that
already on offer, there has to be something different, we make the
difference. The Hampshire market is different, Romsey and The New
Forest National Park are different and the difference is a good
one.
Lisa Evans, Sales Director