Selling and Buying a Home in Lockdown

When we went into lockdown in March 2020, I thought Oh no! There goes my career for a second time in a decade. With a mad dash collecting videos, extra photos, measurements of all our stock. The IT and Marketing departments working in overdrive not a week had gone by before I was settling into what would become our new normal. Zoom virtual viewings, online bidding and lengthy calls to both nervous buyers and sellers.

It was a slow start that built momentum especially with first time buyers, these young technologically capable people finally had the upper hand on the ‘all cash’ trader down. They had the confidence in the online world to put an offer forward for a property without ever having physically stepped foot inside. With the mortgage market still functioning and competitive (unlike the property crash of the 00’s) it was a relatively safe bet for a long-term investment.

When we returned to physical viewings in the summer of 2020 the stock on the market was just not there, but it felt like boom times with the number of viewings, valuations and offers we were receiving. With no more open viewings, as an agent I did spend seven and half hours in one house showing a different couple every 10 minutes! If that is what it took to get them into see the house and still, follow the restrictions laid out by the PRSA and the government then that is what we would do.

The second half of 2020 was the busiest period for transactions in over a decade with price inflation moving upwards about 1% in Dublin and up to 2.5% in more rural Ireland. Stock was still low throughout the country but there was a general shift away from city living with families moving to large one-off houses in commuter belts, some moving ‘home’ to rural Ireland. The prospect of not being in an office in Dublin five days a week had meant that buyers and sellers were reevaluating their work/life balance. The outdoors both within the property and the surrounding town became more of a priority.

The first quarter of 2021 was very frustrating with mixed signals from the government about showing property in January it was a little stop start. With a national lockdown again for the first quarter of the year it weighed heavily on the housing market. There was a reintroduction of stricter public health guidelines for the industry, and we were back to Zoom and virtual tours! This has had several notable effects: No construction meant a further contraction in the supply of new homes and a severe deterioration in the stock on the secondhand market. This has led to an upward inflation in prices with a further 1.5% increase in Dublin in the opening of 2021 a total of 2.5% in the last 12 months.

This lack of supply will not be resolved quickly, even with the hoped reopening of physical viewings in May, the supply of both second hand and new home stock is well below where it should be about 5,000 units nationwide. It is a sellers’ market at the moment – have competitive bidding for your property and you don’t have the inconvenience of having to clean up on a Saturday morning while strapping the kids into the car and leaving the dog with the neighbour, but that said most sellers are also buyers and not being able to view or even see a house listed online you would like to move to can make it difficult to decide to sell. So, if you can squish in with in laws, couch surf with friends for few weeks or if we are ever able to escape to the sun again without knowing where you are moving to now is the time to put your home on the market.

Prospective purchasers do not disappear, even if you feel you are paying too much for the property if you take a long-term view as an investment; if it really is a property, you love and if it is home that you can add value to go for it. (Remember a property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it after all!)