Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our clients and customers.

2022 has been another busy year across the Gateway Group at our HQ, London and Leeds offices. We wish you happiness and cheer over the festive season, and good health for the New Year. We’ll return in 2023 to share the latest on Property Matters.

Our offices are open as usual to support you. Do get in touch should you need to.

One in 10 homes on the market has reduced its price by 5%, reports Zoopla, the property website, following two and half years of boom and record-high increases.

As the market cools, the trend has been for sellers to accept discounted prices to complete a house sale. Rightmove, another property website, announced the largest pre-Christmas dip over the last four years, citing an average 2.1% drop. That puts the average asking price for a UK home at just over £359,000 in early December, some £7,850 less than in November. This is a percentage fall similar to that quoted by building society Halifax in November of 2.3%. Others report up to a 3% drop.

Taken in context, however, the average asking prices at the end 2022 are still over 5.5% higher than this time last year. Rightmove also reports an 11% increase in the number of homes for sale on its website compared with last December, predicting a more even balance between supply and demand next year.

The Fire Safety Act 2021 and Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 has been introduced as an important step towards implementing the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 report. The Regulations are being introduced under Article 24 of the Fire Safety Order.

The Act clarifies that responsible persons for multi-occupied residential buildings must manage and reduce the risk of fire for the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding, balconies and windows, and entrance doors to individual flats that open into common parts.

These new regulations introduce additional requirements on responsible persons, aimed at identifying and communicating fire risk information to those who need to know about the risk. This includes providing fire risk information regarding evacuation procedures to residents in a format they will understand.

Here’s everything you need to know about The Fire Safety Act 2021 and Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022.

Quality Street guarantees a low fixed cost when selling your home, and a high-quality, joined-up service. Gateway customers can also benefit from a further 10% discount.

Quality Street is the streamlined way to sell your home, providing estate agent, conveyancing and mortgage advice services all under one roof. All for a fixed price of £2,999. Your home will be marketed on all the major property portals, seen by millions of buyers. There are no tie-ins, no upfront costs, and no fee if your home isn’t sold. Multi-agency arrangements are even accepted.

Customers have saved thousands in fees with our streamlined approach, provided by our team of professionals, while also benefiting from a joined-up service. Your customer manager will keep you updated regularly, avoiding the usual frustrations when selling a home.

10% discount on Quality Street services

This offer is open to all Gateway Group customers. Just get in touch and we’ll take it from there.

It can only be knitwear at this time of year. As you can see, our teams at Gateway HQ took novelty jumpers seriously on the 8 December to support a great cause.

The festive knitwear looked more tree-mendous than ever as everyone donned a Christmas jumper, from trendy to timeless, chic to cheeky, imaginative to un-fir-gettable. The money raised from taking part in the event will be donated to charity. That’s a real Claus for celebration. Thanks to all for sprucing things up and wearing some absolute crackers this year.