Does Newtons’s law apply to the country house market?

 “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” – whilst a downturn in the volume of new instructions is normal at the beginning of winter, reports from the RICS and NAEA confirm that this has been particularly evident this year – which has generated an unusually high number of enquiries from prospective buying clients, frustrated by their inability to nail down the right property.

The Autumnal surge in the volume of sales, evident over recent years, was particularly muted this year – despite some (in some cases amazing!) reductions of guide prices. However, a bargain is only a bargain if it is something for which one would have paid full price – and what is evident from the new enquiries we are receiving, is that buyers know what they want and are unwilling to compromise (particularly on location, size and setting).

What is also clear is that they need certainty when it comes to their budget – i.e. that any ‘on-cost’ on, say, modernisation works can be reliably forecast.

We are quietly optimistic that the number of purchasing opportunities will grow in the early months of the New Year – not as a surge in listings on the property portals, but as off-market instructions.