Estate agents have more homes on their books than at any point in the past decade, which is keeping a lid on house prices.
On average, estate agent branches in Britain have 63 homes they are marketing, a 12 per cent increase on this time last year and the most since 2014, data from Rightmove, the property search website, shows.
At the height of the pandemic’s “race for space”, branches would be lucky if they had 40 homes for sale at any one point. That shortage of stock, coupled with booming demand fuelled by the stamp-duty holidays, is what pushed house prices up to record highs.
Rightmove said that the increased choice was helping to increase would-be buyers’ negotiating power and preventing house prices from