Research by national estate agent, Keller Williams UK, has revealed that despite Covid causing a -38% year on year decrease due to lockdown restrictions, the property market in England and Wales still rallied to see a total of £171.7bn worth of residential property sold in 2020.

Keller Williams analysed all residential property sales to complete via the Land Registry between January and December of last year, to see just what impact the current stamp duty holiday has had on the market.

The research shows that in 2020, a total sum of £171.7bn worth of residential property was sold across England and Wales. An extremely respectable performance given the tricky landscape posed by the pandemic, although this is a marked decline on the £2.8bn sold in 2019.

Highest sum of property sold

When it comes to the most valuable pockets of the property market, London takes the silver gold and bronze.

Westminster saw the highest sum of property sold prices, with £2.9bn worth of residential bricks and mortar sold in 2020. Kensington and Chelsea came second with £2.7bn worth of property sold, while Wandsworth was the third most valuable home selling hotspot with a total of £2.5bn worth of property selling last year.

However, London far from dominates the top 20 most valuable areas of the property market in England and Wales.

With a total of almost £2bn in property sold over the last year, Cornwall is the most valuable market outside of the capital. Birmingham also ranked high with £1.8bn in property sales throughout 2020.

Leeds (£1.75bn) Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (£1.7bn), Wiltshire (£1.5bn), Bristol (£1.45bn), Dorset (£1.45bn) and Cheshire East (£1.4bn) also ranked as some of the most valuable areas of the property market outside of London.

CEO of Keller Williams UK, Ben Taylor, commented:

“Despite the radical market turn around spurred by the reopening of the property sector and the introduction of a stamp duty holiday, Covid has clearly had a lasting impact on the market in 2020.

While the average house price has surged this year, a -38% reduction in the total value of property sold demonstrates the detrimental impact the pandemic had on market activity over the last year.

This is even more significant when you consider that it’s compared with a 2019 market that was already operating sluggishly due to Brexit uncertainty.

However, when considering all of these factors, it makes the late rally shown by the property market in the wake of a stamp duty holiday introduction all the more impressive. To think that this market revival still saw £171.7bn worth of residential property sold in what is a relatively short period of time is actually quite remarkable.”