Mortgage-free home sales decline

December 2, 2019 by Brendan O'Neill

Property Market

The percentage of UK homes that were purchased mortgage-free during the first half of 2019 dropped to the lowest point since records began, a new report by Hamptons International shows.

The proportion of houses that were bought using cash for that period was 28%, which not only marks the lowest percentage in the 12 years since this data started being collated, but is also a drop of 8% from the peak level of 36% exactly 10 years ago.

Hamptons is indicating that there has been a 5% fall in the number of homes bought without a mortgage during the past two years, and that all regions had seen a decline. The two areas which experienced the biggest drop in these numbers are the West Midlands and London, at 9% and 7% respectively. There was just a 1% drop in Scotland.

The data suggests there are two main reasons for the fall in mortgage-free house sales, with the first being the rising cost of homes. The average price for a cash purchase during the first half of 2019 was £217,810, a rise of 1.4% on the price for two years ago.

The other major contributory factor is the lower number of buy-to-let investors buying houses using cash, which has fallen from 32% of the overall total a decade ago to 24% in the opening half of this year.

While the rise in house prices is not good news for people looking to buy, advisors who have taken a CeMAP course are well-placed to help find a mortgage that lets them go ahead with a purchase.