New vendor, buyer and tenant enquiry volumes were all up year-on-year in the final full business week before 2021 arrives, but the seasonal slowdown gathered pace in the face of mounting concerns as the Government announced sweeping new coronavirus restrictions, the Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) showed.

Vendors dropped 13% compared to the previous week, but remained a very strong 23% above the same week last year. Buyers were 11% higher on the same measure, and tenants some 17% up. Landlords fell 9% on the week to finish 8% below the same week last year, the first YPST category since the initial 23 March lockdown to fall into negative territory year-on-year.

But in a year where consumers have voted with their fingers and embraced digital in more ways than ever before, traffic volume to own branded estate agent websites was 33% higher than the same week last year. The volume of people engaging via live chat was up 31% on the period, delivering a significant 25% more leads.

Yomdel provides 24/7 managed live chat services to 3,800 estate agent offices in the UK, handling more than a 1.5m chats per year. It has analysed the data and leads captured in live chat going back to January 2019, up until week ending 20 December 2020. The website visitor data is a sample across major estate agency groups in the UK and covers in excess of 46 million unique website visits back to January 2019.

“All bets may be off for the moment as regards the pandemic, Brexit, the economic outlook and sales progression logjams, but new estate agent enquiries remain strong. The next few weeks are going to be hugely important as we discover whether the extraordinary market this year can persist into 2021,” said Andy Soloman, Yomdel Founder & CEO.

“A key question is whether all pent up and future demand has been sucked into the covid economy, or whether there is more to come as you’d usually see in January? One thing is clear, there are lots of people at home with time on their hands. As we have already seen this year, if lockdowns keep them at home they will be online and estate agents will see increased web traffic,” he added.

The YPST methodology establishes a base line average shown as 100% or 100, calculated according to average engagement values over the 62 weeks prior to the lockdown, and plots movements from there according to the volumes of people engaging in live chat, their stated needs, questions asked, and new business leads generated. Data is measured over full 24-hour periods.

New vendors lost 13.09%, or 9.12 points, to end the week on 60.57, which left them 39% below the pre-covid-19 62-week average, but 23% above the same week in 2019.

Buyers dropped 18.20%, or 14.8 points, to close at 66.54, some 33% below the pre-covid-19 average but 11% above the same week last year.

Landlords fell 8.95%, or 6.49 points, to finish at 66.06, some 34% below the average but and 8% below the same week in 2019.

Tenants steadied, dipping 0.53%, or 0.39 points, to close at 73.44, some 27% below the pre-covid-19 average and 17% higher than the same week last year.

The following graph looks at the relationship between website visitor volumes, live chat volumes and the volume of leads generated. The data samples more than 45 million visitors to estate agent websites from Jan 2019 – 20 December and shows how web traffic (blue line) is 37% higher than the same week last year. The volume of people using live chat (red line) and the numbers of new business leads captured (purple line) are 23% and 38%, respectively, above the same week 2019.