We now approach the traditional summer period with the month of June normally being a good one for the housing market, however the announcement of the general election is a bit of a curve ball.
It is fair to say the general election date is far sooner than expected as the economy is still recovering and it was expected that the current government would have liked mortgage borrowers to have experienced lower interest rates and a feel-good factor before going to the ballot box.
One week after the announcement little has changed, activity is still reasonably strong, it seems house movers are continuing in the same vain as before. The political parties are yet to divulge their plans for the housing market so once the manifestos are released this may influence both sellers and buyers at that time.
The election feels like a bit of a disturbance to the market as good progress was being made, confidence has been building, the economy has been getting stronger and the talk of an interest rate deduction feels imminent. It’s a pity the momentum is about to be broken after so many difficult months over the past couple of years.
The hope is, the month of June will be as active as May with transaction levels continuing to rise. The Bank of England meet again on 20th June and although it was widely expected that interest rates would be reduced; now the election campaigning has started there is a chance the Monetary Policy Committee now wait until August when the dust has settled?
Realistically it is a case of “wait and see” as the coming months will be very difficult to predict but lower interest rates seem more likely than political stability.