A year after Estate Agents had to cease normal activities at the start of the first lock down it seems appropriate to look back over the last year. As many of our key and critical workers were fighting the pandemic during lockdown one nearly all property sales and letting activity went in to hibernation. We continued to run our operations remotely, however, valuations, viewings etc had to cease and the majority of our fantastic team had to be placed on furlough. Out of the blue in mid May it was announced that estate agents could return to work immediately. We had already put safe working procedures in place so were able to reopen quickly to deal with the pent up demand in the market. June was an extremely busy month. Then in early July the stamp duty holiday was announced. This really turbo charged the housing market. Activity rocketed. Coupled with the challenges of operating safely this put us under a degree of pressure but our team stepped up and performed amazingly. We saw some amazing activity levels through the autumn with offices hitting levels of sales consistently not seen since pre credit crunch days. Estate agents were able to continue working safely through both lockdown two and the current lockdown. With the extended stamp duty holiday and a more hopeful year in front of us the housing market is predicted to remain strong and robust. Here is looking forward to a more stable and healthy rest of 2021!