I started working in Winchester in 1997 for a wonderful business called James Harris. Hume Jones ran the Country House business and I was his assistant. I remember going to see a house in Preston Candover which we put on at £500,000. I spent a week doing viewings before Hume agreed the sale in competition at £550,000. It was a sign that the market was gaining pace for the first time since the recession in 1990.
This market largely continued with a few bumps in the early 2000s, but the focus was very much on pricing the properties favourably and watching the prices rise, often as with my first sale with multiple offers. By 2003 I was working for Strutt & Parker in Winchester.
In 2007 Northern Rock went under and by the
autumn of 2008 we were properly in recession. In 2009 I returned to Winchester after a few years in the S&P Country department. I found a very different estate agency dynamic. The competition had been Savills, KF, JSS and Lane Fox. Charters had come in and taken the market by storm in a Foxtons style of agency, the top end of the market had all but disappeared and all agents were scrabbling for position.
I remember visiting the owners of the 14 houses we had on the market to deliver news that they needed to consider a 20% price reduction. It was a bitter pill, but the office had not sold a house for 4 months. The buyers reacted and the Winchester market (that some said was recession proof) started to move. By September 2009 we were flying and the market had bounced back and was in full flow again. There was a slight two tone market with the best selling very well and the blighted taking longer. The concept of sensible pricing to achieve more started to become very rare, one buyer for each property was the norm and therefore pricing became important.
The next few years saw somewhat of an arms war as the agent jostled for market share, over pricing became the norm and sellers were often looking at a marketing period of 9-12 months as they chased high prices, only to eventually sell for what the house was worth with sometimes the second or third agent.
In 2015 with the announcement that Brexit was going to happen the market slowed and the pricing challenged become a bigger issue. Often owners could not accept the reality of the uncertainty Brexit had brought. At this stage and after 20 years I left S&P. When we left Europe there was some positivity and we were all hopeful 2020 was going to see a return to the good old days of the early 2000s.
None of us saw COVID and certainly did not anticipate the market doing what it did! I did two deals during COVID. The first at about 13% below the guide price and the second as we came out of an international pandemic at the guide price. We must have been mad, but the second deal looks amazing two years on.
2022 has been recorded as the strongest January since 2005. The huge lack of supply continues to fuel prices and despite rising inflation and interest rates we do not anticipate much changing for the rest of this year.
Having worked in the Winchester area for 25 years I am seen many highs and very few lows. The market tends to slow down before bouncing back quickly. Certainly, this current bounce is likely to continue, with the only question being – for how long?
