Housing market set to re-open

6/26/2020

Those who were thinking about moving house in the Spring had their aspirations dashed when lockdown was imposed. Since 23 March, it has not been possible to bring your property to the market, have a Home Report prepared or view properties.

This not only gave people who were thinking about selling a problem but gave those already in the housing chain a real headache.

The Registers of Scotland closed the Application Record on 14 March and that meant new titles couldn’t be registered and the Scottish Government imposed lockdown meant that unless is was urgent and essential and otherwise unavoidable, people should not move house. Their advice was, where possible, re-arrange the entry date to another future date when the lockdown had begun to ease. The big problem with that was nobody knew when that was going to be and how long the lockdown would last.

Steps were taken during lockdown to allow urgent and essential transactions to settle and we did our very best to help out clients through this very difficult time.

We are, at last, beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel with the publication of the Route Map out of Lockdown.

On 28 May, the First Minister of Scotland announced that Scotland had entered Phase 1 of the Route Map out of Lockdown where certain limited activities were relaxed.  She indicated that over time we would progress through the phases until we could finally relax lockdown completely.

On 29 June - we will see the residential property market come back to life. You will then be able to:

• Visit an estate or letting agent, a developer’s sales office or a show home
• View a property you’re looking to buy or rent
• Prepare a property to move into
• Move house
• Visit a property to undertake any activity required for the sale of that property (surveyors and valuers will be able to visit to prepare the Home Report and property marketing particulars)

We know from speaking to our clients that many are very keen to get moving and we expect to be busy. We’ll still continue working from home but will be available to clients through the usual contact numbers and email messages.

If you are thinking about buying or selling, we’d encourage you to get in touch with us now so we can discuss how we can help as the market recovers from lockdown.