Are These The First Shoots Of A Property Recovery?

According to numbers from the National Association of Estate Agents (NAER) the amount of people looking for a new home rose to a four year high in September 2011. That was the second consecutive month that the figures rose, a little bit of good news for home-owners looking to sell or worried about negative equity held in their property.

The rise in numbers isn’t a huge jump by any stretch of the imagination, NAER figures show that the number of house hunters registering to look for new homes grew on average from 304 in August to 308 in September. That’s not a vast number of potential buyers it’s true but it’s the highest that many estate agents have seen since September 2007, when 326 potential home buyers were registered at each agents’ offices.

The range of properties that each office deals with is increasing too, there were 65 properties, on average, per office in August this year, in September that figure went up to 72 although the number of sales remained constant at eight. However, the rise in both supply and demand is clearly a good sign for any-one intending to sell their house and the housing market generally.

When it comes to commercial property to let Manchester appears to be growing too as companies are looking for two and three quarters of a million square metres of space over the next few months. Businesses are asking estate managementcompanies to look at ways of maximising their floor space while cutting back on costs. For retailers that can mean changing the layout of the shop but for other companies that could mean changing their office space all together. One company, the healthcare services provider BUPA took on advisors to help them locate an additional 140,000 square feet of additional office space. The biggest influences affecting the choices are total property costs, proximity to a skilled workforce, transport links and availability of distribution, local markets and consumers. Things that Manchester has an abundance of.