Graham Norwood's Market Review - August 2008

Graham Norwood is a leading property journalist and is a frequent contributor to the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, The Independent and The Observer.


Perhaps it’s the sun, but a few estate agents are behaving strangely. For example, a leaflet circulated in Wandsworth by a ‘posh’ agency – which really should know better - claims the downturn may be over by September.

Well, it won’t be. Data from Hometrack, a business consultancy, shows London prices fell 1.3% in July. Those sellers who actually find a buyer are lucky to get 90% of their asking price. London Residential Research, another consultancy, says new-build volumes will drop 57% by Christmas. If there were signs of this reversing within a few weeks, we would have seen them by now – and we haven’t.

Yet if there is a silver lining from the wretched drop in the London housing market, it is that most agents – but not quite all – have been reassuringly honest. Chard and many others have told buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants exactly how it is.

Telling the truth is not only professional but wins more business in the long term; people who buy and sell recognise a firm that’s honest and forthright. Which is why, despite agents down-sizing and some folding, there has been no public gloating. Londoners may blame the government or the banks for the market being in the doldrums, but they aren’t blaming the agents.

In its own way, that’s quite a result.