Comment: Strong signs that this will be a good year for the local market

The promised Boxing Day deluge did happen, and the properties agents had been squirreling away as late Christmas presents for desperate house hunters hit Rightmove on the 26th as we’d hoped.

For us personally, there were no potential viewings among them, but simply seeing a spike in new homes coming to market felt like present enough following the drought-like conditions we'd witnessed earlier in the month.

Turns out the traditional pre-Christmas lull combined with election anxiety and ongoing Brexit stress results in next to no new homes being put up for sale!

Whatever your thoughts on the election result, there's no denying that the sense of relative certainty it's brought can only be a good thing for those of us who have been struggling to find somewhere to buy in such a sluggish market.

Exactly what the result means locally has been explored in greater depth by Richard Burton in this week's feature.

The future, according to most of the quoted experts, is bright - and for a lucky few, it's dazzling - music to my ears.

Happily, some local agents are already reporting longed-for movement in what's been a depressingly stagnant market, with Connells having an especially happy new year in their Letchworth office, where more sales were recorded in the first week of 2020 than the whole of January 2019.

Branch manager Craig Flynn told Richard that no one has mentioned the dreaded B-word since the Tories secured their majority last month, a result he says has had a "massive" impact on the property market in Letchworth.

Here's hoping for more of the same across the county, as sellers see increased political stability as a sign that now is finally the right time to make a move (please!)