Rightmove records busiest month ever
Last month was a record breaker for Rightmove. Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto - Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
January was Rightmove’s busiest month ever, with total visits surpassing 150 million for the first time.
The property portal had 152 million visits last month, a 7 per cent increase on January 2019.
Prior to this, the record-holding month was May 2019.
The five busiest days ever on Rightmove were all between January 21 and 29, with Wednesday 29 proving the most popular with 5.7 million visits - an increase of 9 per cent on the previous record-holding day, April 24 2019.
Time spent by house-hunters on the site was also up 4 per cent, with people perusing properties for a total of 1.17 billion minutes.
Rightmove director Miles Shipside said: "Home-movers have sprung into action in 2020, with a large number of agents telling us that sales and valuations have picked up significantly in their local areas."
He noted that an imbalance remained, however, with demand growing at a faster rate than new supply "and no clear sign yet of any uplift in new listings compared to this time last year.
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"But we could see a new wave of sellers in the coming weeks," he added.
The number of sales being agreed by agents was also up 12 per cent on January 2019, the biggest annual increase in any month since July 2017.
London saw the largest uplift - 26 per cent year-on-year - while the East of England was close behind with a 20 per cent upswing.
Miles said: "The stage certainly looks set for an active spring if those sellers considering putting their homes up for sale end up doing so.
"But to catch this wave of buyer momentum, sellers should take care not to over-price their homes.
"It's still a price sensitive market and there's a limit to what buyers can borrow even though mortgage interest rates are temptingly low."
