While spring is statistically the slowest season when it comes to property transactions, it remains a vitally important time for estate agents when it comes to laying the foundations for a successful year ahead.
The latest property industry insight from estate agent comparison site, GetAgent.co.uk, analysed Land Registry data over the last five years to see when the market is at its busiest and how the traditional spring surge in market activity impacts sales volumes.
The analysis of 60 months' worth of sales transactions data shows that over the last five years, just over one million homes (1.115m) have sold during the spring months of March, April and May. While this remains a sizable level of market activity, it equates to just 23% of the total transactions seen during this period.
This means that over the last five years, the spring season has accounted for the lowest proportion of homes sold compared to the other three seasons.
Winter is the second slowest home selling season, with some 1.115m homes sold over the last five years equating to 24.3% of all market activity.
When it comes to the busiest season for sales volumes, it’s a close-run race between summer and autumn.
Over the last five years, almost 1.191m homes have sold during the summer months of June, July and August, accounting for 26% of total market activity.
Of course, it’s important to note that while most sales complete during summer and autumn, the work required to get them over the line starts many months before. So in this respect, spring is the time when agents need to get to work building their sales pipeline, in order to take advantage of the seasonal change in seller activity and to see them through the remainder of the year.
Co-founder and CEO of GetAgent.co.uk, Colby Short, commented: “Overall Spring is clearly the slowest period for property transactions and therefore estate agency revenue. GetAgent, like estate agents, is only paid on completion of sale so our revenue fluctuates seasonally in the same way.
"Seasonality seems to affect different parts of the sale cycle in different ways. Often either the top of the funnel in agency is good or the bottom of the funnel is good. They rarely align and this can be difficult to manage psychologically.
"However this data, allied with the “spring has sprung” stories that have abounded in recent weeks show how important it is to manage this and make the most of these spring months. So despite market transactions being particularly low at the moment, it's really important we don't lose focus on building that pipeline to ensure our future revenue.”