THE STATE OF THE HOUSING MARKET with PAUL SUTHERLAND REAY
18 May 2026
We met for breakfast at a time of ferment – when you read this, we may have a different Prime Minister. And the war in Iran might have come to an end. Who knows?
What we do know is that Paul Sutherland Reay, our speaker for May, has been in the local estate agent business for over thirty years. Last year he set up a new business, the PSR Estate and Lettings Agency, based in New Mills. His face may be familiar if you watch BBC 1’s Escape to the Country (Derbyshire doesn’t feature enough in that show, does it).
He was upbeat: “It’s not a slump. It’s a buyer’s market. The market has been very high –housing inventory is at an 11 year high.” Buyers have far more to choose from, so they are taking their time. But here, we have certain advantages. “The market is very good in the High Peak. £254,000 is the average price here – that’s still within reach for first time buyers,” he said firmly. That’s slightly lower than the national average, according to ONS. We can also expect relatively quick turnarounds: 45 – 60 days for the bigger properties, a month for smaller ones. His advice is that if you are selling a property, get all the essentials done first – the local authority searches, finding the deeds, for example – and for heaven’s sake, tidy up. And perhaps don’t leave things lying around like jewellery in open sight!
By contrast, Zoopla suggest the delay nationally on average is 25 weeks. Add in a chain break, says Howsold.uk, and it’s 9- 12 months or more. Paul said the longest delay he has experienced was 2½ years, but he got there. That takes some persistence.
Nationally, we know that 44% of homes listed for sale in the past three years didn’t sell. Of those that did, 53% needed a price drop. Many younger owners overprice because they need the money for their next purchase, rather than realistically what it will fetch. Price comparison websites like Zoopla can be wildly over-optimistic – house price inflation recently has mirrored national inflation, rather than having its own trajectory. Affordability is still the key.
One important plus is transport, and here his choice of New Mills for his office makes sense. “New Mills has two railway lines,” he pointed out – both heading into Manchester, one going south to Buxton, the other the Hope Valley Line to Sheffield. So keen young buyers are coming out of Manchester to inspect the Peak District. Much of the housing on offer is 2 bed terraced, which can be the perfect starter home or an excellent rental. The contrast is with, say, Cumbria where transport links are far fewer, so that petrol costs loom large, and fewer job opportunities to attract younger families; so the housing market there is struggling.
I would add, that older buyers will also ask, where is the nearest hospital? – travelling 100 miles to it is not an attractive option. Especially when the nearest has been rated “inadequate” by the CQC, as in Cumbria. It doesn’t help that in the Lake District, as in other tourist hot-spots, many empty properties are actually holiday lets, so communities are being hollowed out. A vicious circle.
One downside here is that solicitors and conveyancers from elsewhere don’t understand our leasehold system. Since time immemorial in the north-west it has been normal to issue 999-year leases, with ground rent of perhaps £1 a year. That’s effectively freehold, and will often be so advertised – but when London lawyers see it, their advice to clients is often unhelpful and wrong. Similarly 400year-old cottages are not uncommon here (I live in one). They’ve stood for a long time. But surveyors unfamiliar with the area will turn them down flat as “unstable.” Really!
Another downside is that our older properties have poor EPC ratings, so they cost more to run; “People want a new house.” He calls it the Energy Premium – buyers are paying a whopping £72,000 premium for new builds over older homes. They also, increasingly, want an EV charger, which isn’t possible for terraced property. In East Cheshire all new builds must have a charger: future proofing, which helps explain why Marple, with so many semis, is buoyant. Chargers are an issue where (as we heard in our last meeting) local authorities will have to catch up, sooner or later.
But the High Peak also has seriously large properties with huge capital gains to be made. One elderly client bought his home for £73,000 decades ago, and has sold it at £1.5 million. I bet it has great views. This gives the lie to the notion that only in the Home Counties can big gains be made.
Paul called the current quarter, Q2 2026, “The Great Recalibration.” The Renters’ Rights Act which became effective on May 1st sparked a flurry of sales in previous quarters as small landlords sold up – but national figures suggest these were often bought by larger corporate letters who can cope with the regulatory framework. The rules are much stricter: you can’t any longer tell a tenant “No smoking, no pets,” and it will be harder to do rent reviews or obtain vacant possession. Rents have risen steadily as a result, not always the good news for renters that the legislators wanted; in the High Peak the average monthly rent is now £900. And 650,000 owners are still on 2% mortgages. That can only go one way.
Paul told us many wonderful anecdotes including not noticing the “interesting” spicy books by a bedside until after he took the photos and published them. Much of his day-to-day role is hand-holding both buyers and sellers. Buyers tend, naturally, to massage the figures when they check online how much mortgage they can get. When they apply in real life and have to produce proof of income, “horizons change” and sales can then quickly fall through, so his advice is to sort out your finance before you start looking. That includes proof against money laundering, which for helpful grandparents can be a nightmare. Sellers including downsizers often hold out for a much bigger capital gain than is realistic. But it’s not just buyers and sellers. When a property is part of probate, I sometimes wonder why it takes so long. Do the legal firm’s payments by hour have some effect, I wonder?
Paul’s story is that of a traditional small retail business, facing rocketing business rates, NICs, increased minimum wages for staff, rising transport and energy costs. Yet estate agencies are one area where retail is surviving; customers may research online (and advertising on websites can be horrendous – £4,500 pa goes from Paul to Rightmove, a reflection of their dominance) but people like the personal contact. However the fees which provide his business revenue are typically small, around 1%, and often at year end barely net 0.8%. “In the USA, in France, estate agents do more – take the client round, find properties for them. But the fee is much higher, often 8 – 15%.” Yet this level of service is what British buyers expect, for far less.
We had a very wide-ranging discussion – “In this country, people are obsessed with talking about housing,” as Paul rightly said. That made it enormously worthwhile and we are grateful to him for sparing us the time to come.