Property sales remain above the million mark as year finishes on a high

Property sales remain above the million mark as year finishes on a high

Residential property sales remained above the 1m mark in the UK last year despite the political uncertainty, HMRC figures suggest.

Provisional HMRC property transaction data for December suggests sales last month were up 11.2% annually to 109,850 on a non-adjusted basis.

This took the total number of sales for 2019 to 1,180,610, down 0.91% from 2018 when 1,191,460 were recorded.

The sales data was up 6.8% annually and 6.2% monthly on a seasonally adjusted basis to 104,670 in December – the highest for the month in four years – and 1,180,360 for the whole of 2019.

Mike Scott, chief property analyst for Yopa, said: “The seasonally adjusted figure of 104,670 homes sold in December was the highest since December 2015, four years earlier.

“The total number of homes sold in the whole of 2019 was 1.18m, only fractionally down on 2018’s figure of 1.19m.

“These figures confirm other data showing a strong end to the year in the housing market, and setting us up for an even stronger start to 2020 now that the political uncertainty of Brexit and a hung Parliament has been lifted, at least for the time being.

“We expect that the number of houses sold this year will be over 1.2m, higher than in either of the previous two years.”