The UK property market’s secret north-south divide: It takes three times as long to sell your house in London’s Kensington or Mayfair than in Carlisle or Glasgow
Selling a house in London? Good luck: it’s likely to take you three times as long as the average house sale in northern Carlisle, according to new figures revealing a different kind of north-south divide in the UK’s property market.
House sellers in Carlisle, Cumbria, can expect to seal the deal after just six viewings. Sales in Glasgow, similarly, take an average of just seven viewings.
Head further south, however, and things begin to slow down, grinding to a near halt in the capital, where the average house sale takes 16 viewings.
The north-south divide in the property market is well-established, of course, but normally it refers to the difference in prices. This research from online estate agent House Network shows that there is also a clear divide in how long it takes to get things sold.
Six of the top ten slowest selling postcodes can be found within the M25, with Ilford and Wembley topping the list.
Even so, Mark Reading, chief executive of House Network, points out that on balance, selling your house is “relatively simple”, even for Londoners:
When you place this into the context that selling a house is almost certainly the biggest sale we make in our lives, 15 viewings is no time at all.
Well-heeled districts in London’s W postcode are among the hardest place in which to get your house sold, as Kensington and Mayfair sellers have to slow through an average of 20 viewings, compared to just 11 in the north of the country.
(Of course, considering that the average house price in the area now soars above £3m, perhaps it’s not all that surprising that it takes a little longer to find the right buyer…)