Hereford property market news
October 2009
The supply of property for sale in the area served by Knight
Frank’s Hereford estate agents has not
been significantly affected by
the downturn in the housing
market.
Choice has always been limited in this beautiful part of the world due to the longevity of home ownership. While some prices have been affected, the best examples in their class remain resilient. Farms appear to have weathered the financial storm well with good
prices being achieved.
Knight Frank’s Hereford estate agents covers a large swathe of country property for sale either side of the Welsh border and, while we have recently struck some very good deals on attractive townhouses in Hereford,
the vast majority of our business covers country houses in Herefordshire, south Shropshire, and Monmouthshire. About 20% of our property sales are in Wales and our reach extends as far as the Pembrokeshire Coast. Supply has not dipped as much as in other parts of the country for a number of reasons.
Rual property valuations
Very few vendors sell after only a short period of ownership – properties rarely change hands – and subsequently tend to be less indebted and more able to cope with the drop in prices, painful as it might feel. The main sale drivers tend to be death, retirement and the other inevitabilities of life, ensuring a steady stream of availability. While rural property valuations in general have fallen by about 15% there is no clear rule of thumb across the area with prices holding up a little better around more fashionable towns like Ludlow and those with good schools and communications such as Ledbury and Monmouth.
Market towns will always attract a steady stream of interest and we have recently sold a number of good townhouses before they reached the open market. Though the area itself offers few lucrative employment opportunities and the distance from London limits the market for second homes, the capital remains the most important source of our best buyers.
Accessibility to employment centres like Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff also helps to dictate house prices. Our Hereford estate agents, in conjunction with our Farms and Estates department in London, sell a good number of attractive agricultural properties each year and prices for farmland remain buoyant at well over
£5,000/acre.