Sales Rise By Over A Third

The UK independent estate agent saw sales grow by 38.2% on February and some 50.8% on January – boosted in part by the end of Stamp Duty Relief for first time buyers of properties below £250,000. This equated to a sale every eight minutes across the company’s 100-plus strong branch network.

The best performing areas of the country remain London and the South East followed by the East Midlands and East Anglia. The top performing individual branch remains Colchester, which has seen sales rise by 22% since the turn of the year.

Russell Jervis, Managing Director of haart estate agents, said:

“We’ve had a fantastic start to 2012 at haart with the number of property sales exceeding all expectations. The end of Stamp Duty Relief on March 25 certainly helped but that was only one of the contributing factors.

"The combination of the aforementioned Stamp Duty Relief, good mortgage offers coming onto the market, realistic pricing from vendors and a sense of optimism among buyers helped to make the first three months of 2012 one of our best for many years.

“What’s more with applicant levels currently standing at 5 – 5,500 a week, the appetite to move continues to remain strong, and we are confident this will be reflected in another strong set of trading figures at the end of the second quarter of the year.”