Local Life - Wigan - November 2018

84 Property
All about the
Numbers
by Alan Batt
After a close look at figures, I predict
that the number of residential property
transactions in Wigan will rise 0.7% year
on year compared to 2017.
So why are actual transaction numbers
so important? Many economists and
property market commentators believe
transaction numbers give a more precise
indicator of the health of the property
market than just house values.
In the six years before the credit crunch
in 2007/8, the average number of
completed property transactions in
Wigan stood at 6,516 per year, yet in the three years
afterwards, this dropped to an average of 2,857 per
year. Roll the clock forward and in 2017 a total of
5,051 homes changed hands in the area.
In the past, a reduction in the number of properties
selling has often been believed to be the first signal
of a down turn in the housing market as a whole.
Alan Batt
Alan Batt is a member of The Royal Institution of
Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and has worked within
the Wigan property market for over 30 years.
The graph illustrates that house prices were rising in
the six/seven years before the credit crunch (2000
to 2006), and then numbers dropped off a cliff
during the start of the credit crunch.
Against the backdrop of transactions rising in
recent years, there is an underlying trend in the
reduction of properties coming onto the market
for sale in Wigan. In general Wigan people aren’t
moving as much as they were 30 years ago
However, in certain sectors of the Wigan property
market there is a glut of properties on the market at
the moment and so prices and values are dropping
on those types of properties as sellers compete for
the limited amount of buyers. Yet in other sectors of
the Wigan property market the exact reverse is true;
there is an absolute dearth of properties available
and you have buyers fighting tooth and nail with