The fringes of London and the commuter belt are home to six of the 10 areas which had seen the biggest increase in supply – many of which are downsizers returning to the sales market.
The number of listings in the Surrey town of Esher, where the average asking price was £1.05m, jumped from 23 in August to 58 in September.
Karl Matier, of Savills estate agents’ Esher office, said: “We are getting further away from the lockdowns, closer to normality, more people are willing to think about selling,” said Mr Matier. Valuation requests, a key lead indicator for future listings, have also jumped 10pc, he added. But supply was still down by a third on the pre-pandemic level.
“The biggest constraint is that sellers haven’t seen anything to buy. But the more stock that trickles through, the more people will sell,” said Mr Matier.
While the stamp duty holiday fired up the market and created a frenzy to move before the deadline, the rush also deterred many sellers from listing.
“The upside was that they could get a good price on their sale, the downside was that they were likely to have to bid competitively with other people to buy somewhere,” said Mr Matier. At the higher end of the market, where stamp duty savings paled in relation to house price, there was more incentive to wait. “Now, a bit of froth has come out of the market,” said Mr Matier.
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