A year after Estate Agents had to cease normal activities at the start of the first lock down it seems appropriate to look back over the last year.
As many of our key and critical workers were fighting the pandemic during lockdown one nearly all property sales and letting activity went in to hibernation. We continued to run our operations remotely, however, valuations, viewings etc had to cease and the majority of our fantastic team had to be placed on furlough.
Out of the blue in mid May it was announced that estate agents could return to work immediately. We had already put safe working procedures in place so were able to reopen quickly to deal with the pent up demand in the market.
June was an extremely busy month. Then in early July the stamp duty holiday was announced. This really turbo charged the housing market. Activity rocketed. Coupled with the challenges of operating safely this put us under a degree of pressure but our team stepped up and performed amazingly.
We saw some amazing activity levels through the autumn with offices hitting levels of sales consistently not seen since pre credit crunch days.
Estate agents were able to continue working safely through both lockdown two and the current lockdown.
With the extended stamp duty holiday and a more hopeful year in front of us the housing market is predicted to remain strong and robust.
Here is looking forward to a more stable and healthy rest of 2021!
Although Capital Gains Tax (CGT) remained unchanged in the budget earlier this month there are rumours a foot that there are changes coming in the medium term.
CGT is paid on house sales that are not the sellers primary residence such as buy to lets and holiday homes.
We will keep you up to date with changes as they are announced so watch this space!
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This service is available on our full desktop website or on your mobile device and it takes less than a minute to get a free instant estimate of your home's current value with no further obligation!
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Aldreds are delighted to announce that we will be launching 18 new bungalows to the market this summer in the fantastic coastal village of Hopton-on-Sea. A superb selection of two & three bedroom bungalows!! Call our Gorleston office now to register your interest!! 01493 664600 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
With the stamp duty holiday due to end 31st March there is a lot of speculation regarding what may be announced over the next few weeks
The chancellor is due to deliver his budget on Wednesday 3rd March. It may be that no announcement is made until this. However, there are a number of options available to him.
Firstly he may just allow the stamp duty holiday to end as planned. This could cause some pressure in with ongoing sales that aren’t able to complete by 31st March due to unforeseen last minute legal issues.
He may choose to extend the stamp duty holiday by another few weeks and months. This may just ‘kick the can down the road’ and cause similar problems to those described above in a few weeks time.
Many commentators are suggesting a tapered return of stamp duty over a number of months in order to soften the impact of its return on progressing sales.
Watch this space for further updates!
