Throughout the pandemic, people across Britain have purchased new homes. Changes in lifestyle trends and schemes that make purchasing a new home more attainable have pushed people to move home.

Unlatch, a new-build sales optimisation platform recently revealed the most popular homes homebuyers have purchased during the pandemic. 

By analysing the number of new-build homes sold between February 2020 and July 2021, Unlatch was able to accumulate these findings. 

New-build purchases across Britain

Throughout the pandemic, a total of 82,149 new homes were sold. As a percentage, this is the equivalent of 6.5& of market activity.

With a total of 9.9% new home purchases during this uncertain time, Scotland took the number one spot as the location with the highest number of new build purchases.

London came in second place with 8.1% of new-build purchases during the pandemic. Across the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, there were 1,354 new homes purchased since February 2020. This is 35.2% of all pandemic property transactions. 

The East Midlands came in third place with 6.8% of total market transactions through the new homes sector.

The statistics show that London and Scotland had the highest level of new-build sales during this time. Newham reached 24.8%, Midlothian hit 23.2% and Greenwich reached 19.2%. Popular locations including while West Lothian (16.4%) and Hackney (16.3%) also made it to the top 10 locations. 

In contrast, Wales has the lowest number of new-build property purchases at just 3.4%, totalling around 1,820 new-build sales. While the location that experiences the lowest proportion of market activity across the nation was Stevenage as only 0.1% of its sales throughout the pandemic were newly built properties.

Lee Martin, head of UK at Unlatch, concludes: “The availability of new homes and the proportion of market activity they account for is always going to differ based on a range of factors including the availability of developments, the time at which they reach the market, their affordability for homebuyers in the area and the profit margins they provide to those building them.”

“The latter often means that some areas are always going to benefit from a greater degree of focus from housebuilders and new-build market activity will consistently sit above national and regional averages.”

“However, it’s reassuring to see that the new-build sector does account for a healthy level of sales across the board and continues to play a pivotal role in providing the new homes we desperately need.”