Record numbers of people visiting estate agent websites and property portals sustained feverish market activity in the past week as the surge in new enquiries for estate agency services via live chat continued to roll in, the latest date from the Yomdel Property Sentiment Tracker (YPST) showed.

The sales market remained extremely active with demand from vendors in the week ending midnight on 16 August 93% higher than the same week a year earlier, and 78% higher year-on-year for buyers. Landlords and tenants both paused for breath in the week, with landlords up 10% on the same week last year and tenants recording an 11% drop, possibly reflecting uncertainty from students in the face of exam results controversy and coronavirus.

Activity in the residential property market began to soar as Covid-19 lockdown measures began to be eased in May, and has now settled at elevated levels fuelling a mini-boom in property prices.

Estate agency website traffic rose 10% to 34% above the 62-week pre-covid-19 average, and the numbers of people using live chat on estate agent websites was 67% above the pre-covid-19 average, with lead volumes up overall by 97%, reinforcing indications that substantial shifts in consumer behaviour requiring instant human support online are now here to stay.

The full report can be found here.

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 16 August 2020. The website visitor data is a sample across major estate agency groups in the UK and covers in excess of 36 million unique website visits back to January 2019.