New Year surge for Northamptonshire housing market

A Northamptonshire estate agent kicked off 2023 with a surge in home valuation requests.

The beginning of January saw the number of people sending a request to Belvoir to value their home at its third largest on record.

In total, the first week of 2023 was the busiest for home valuation requests since August 2022.

Property asking prices are up by 6.3 per cent year-on-year in Northamptonshire and although average asking prices are still £8,720 lower than their peak in October, after two months of falls, they increased by 0.9 per cent (+£3,301) in January. This is the biggest increase at this time of year since 2020.

While buyer demand is down by a third versus last year's buoyant market, it's up four per cent versus this time in 2019.

House prices in Corby grew by 14 per cent during 2022 and by a staggering 33 per cent in the past five years, according to Belvoir’s latest figures.

At the beginning of 2023, the number of prospective buyers contacting agents is up four per cent compared to the same period in 2019, and up by 55 per cent compared with the two weeks before Christmas.

Belvoir Corby and Kettering managing director Bobby Singh Braich said: “There's been a bigger than usual New Year bounce-back in activity, marking a much more encouraging start to the year than many anticipated. While its still early days, this has given us a positive outlook for the coming months.”