Market suffering due to Southern Rail strike

7th November 2016

Six months of strike action by RMT union members seems to be taking its toll on property prices along the Southern Rail route, with areas such as Worthing and Shoreham-by-Sea seeing house prices drop since July 2016. Hove is 1 of only 4 locations (along with Gatwick, Haywards Heath and Pulborough) along the Southern routes to have seen growth since July, rising by an average of 0.05%.

Staff shortages and industrial action has caused major disruption to a formerly reliable train service; this forced Southern Rail to consider a reduced timetable which was released in July. Since its release, house prices along the line to Brighton have dipped by around 0.4%, with Brighton, Portsmouth and Seaford all being effected when they had previously seen growth for 12 months prior to this.

RMT and Southern Rail still have 10 more strike days planned before Christmas. With no deal in sight, buyers may be put off purchasing until the dispute have been resolved. The affected areas that used to be very attractive to those who commute to work in London. Given the current crisis, people may be put off buying outside of London for now.
On the other hand, it may be a good time for potential buyers to negotiate lower offers, vendors may be worried that their houses are unlikely to sell and therefore think about quicker, easier sales.