Tuesday 14 August 2012

Moving home during the summer holidays is such a drag

From RICS' survey:

Activity slowed further in July, with the weak picture exacerbated by the start of the school holidays.

???

I can understand why the Homeys make up excuses like prices being too bloody high, first time buyers struggling to save up a deposit, Wills and Kate thingy, riots, bad weather, Diamond thingy, good weather, football World thingy, Olympics thingy etc blah blah, those are all reasons why people might be temporarily distracted from "showing aspiration", "getting a foot on the property ladder", and "building up capital" but aren't the summer months (i.e. June to August) normally the months with most sales and purchases?

Obviously my memory isn't what it used to be, so before some pedant catches me out, I'd better check the actual monthly sales/purchase figures according to a reliable source like HM Revenue & Customs hadn't I? Ah, right...If that chart looks a bit higgedly piggedly, we can smoothe it a bit by using a three-month moving average, in which case July and August are the peak months.

5 comments:

Woodsy42 said...

Purchasing and house moving lags some months behind the looking, so are they talking about sales or potential buyer interest at estate agents?

Mark Wadsworth said...

W42, their press release is not quite clear. If they mean "people house hunting" then yes, activity probably starts diminishing in May or even April.

Bayard said...

It's all propaganda. I got fed up today of listening to people bleating on about "getting consumer confidence back" when it's obvious to anyone except those who don't want to see that the reason no-one is spending is that they haven't got any money left and are in hock up to their eyeballs and the government is relieving them of any spare cash they might have had to spend on public sector non-jobs or to give to their mates in private industry.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, me too. Funny that. Question is, how many others have noticed? Are the pol's not aware that most of us have? Or haven't we? Or don't they care any more?

Bayard said...

Sadly, I think the answers to your questions are:
not enough, no, no and no they don't.