In West Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, there is activity, but a real lack of stock.  Good quality, unblighted, well-priced houses are selling.  Over-priced, problematic ones aren’t.

There remains a real discrepancy between what vendors are expecting to recieve for their property, and what buyers are prepared to pay.  The buyers are right – but I am a buyers agent so I would say that, wouldn’t I?!

Markets are about people, and people have to move house – there are now thousands of people locally who might have expected to have moved over the last 3 or 4 years, who haven’t.

Many continue to sit on their hands and do nothing. Interest rates remain low, people can afford to do nothing. That means a great many houses potentially for sale, but not on the market, so there are unlikely to be as many properties openly available for sale as people expect.

However, the suspension of HIPS’s has allowed agents to go back to the time-honoured practice of ‘marketing quietly’ e.g . seeing what interest there may be in a property, without going to the expense of marketing and brochures. 

The clever vendors are aggressively marketing their houses with good agents at the right price – a keen, competitive, fair and reasonable price.

And, at the same time, they will aggressively get out and into the market to find and secure the property they want to move into.

On the assumption that most people have to buy AND sell a property, it’s a great time to be moving. The market looks likely to remain stable over the rest of 2011 – potentially a good year to make a considered and rational move.

You do want to move, don’t you?