Newcastle, UK - Housing Market Newcastle News May 2021

Landlord rent increasing, request for short break holiday homes in Newcastle are up, yet cladding issues and some properties exceeding £1M. Is now the time to invest in a buy-to-let property in Newcastle? SMartmove Northeast, Newcastle’s best movers, compile the Newcastle housing market stories.

Is now the time to invest in a buy-to-let in the North?

New planning rules, a London exodus and ‘levelling up’ — the smart money is in northern cities

Reported in The Times. Looking to “level up” your property portfolio? Interest in buy-to-let in northern cities has picked up following the government’s pledge to build and spend in historically “left behind” areas, a vow it reiterated after its success in the local elections last week.

Steve Jacob, who advises investors as the CEO of Essex-based Fabrik Property Group, says he gets about 2,000 calls from potential investors a month and 80 per cent of them want to buy in the north of England.

Landlord demand hits record volumes

Landlord activity is on the rise according to an analysis by estate & letting agent comparison site, Rentround, which have seen a 13% increase in letting agent related terms run by landlords vs the previous all-time monthly high, states Property Reporter.

While London landlords looking for agents on the site was only up 4% vs the previous all-time high, the rest of the UK was buoyant, with Newcastle, Birmingham, and Bristol experiencing the largest increases, all above 18% compared to previous 6-month averages.

The letting agent comparison service continued to see increases in searches for guaranteed rent services, which increased by 7% vs the previous month. Searches for guaranteed rent activities are already up 30% in the first quarter of 2021 as compared to Q1 2020.

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Letting agent Google searches vs the previous years

The April Google activity, which was 24% up vs the previous month, is 47% higher than the 2017-2021 average number of monthly letting agent related searches. The April record numbers in 2021 paint a vastly different picture to the same time 12 months ago.

In April 2020, volumes of letting agent searches on Google dropped to 330,000 searches the lowest on record excluding December months. Of course, the announcement of lockdown in March 2020 brought a halt to the property market which meant landlord & letting activity was severely reduced.

On the estate agent/seller side, the search volume is buoyant however not at record volumes. April Google searches related to the estate agent world hit 837,000, this is 35,345 less than the previous record in September 2020.

Raj Dosanjh, Rentround founder, comments: “Statistics on the letting agent search terms will be very encouraging for estate & letting agents.

“We all know the impact pent up lockdown demand and the stamp duty holiday has placed the property market in a strong place. These numbers not only back that up but show that the trend is still rising, indicating room for more growth and opportunities for agents to increase revenues.

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