A rather specific question about Rightmove/housing market

[Notlostjustexploring]

So on rightmove for a given area, you can bring up houses for sale, and also for houses for sale including those that are SSTC. Do those numbers reflect details about the housing market? I've got two areas I'm looking at, one comes up as 135 houses for sale, 350 SSTC, the other is 100 houses for sale, but only 130 SSTC and I'm curious as to the disparity.

I don't know enough about how rightmove works to draw any conclusions from that. Is there anyone more knowledgeable than I with insight into it? Or does it not mean anything at all and I'm overthinking?

Overthinking. What useful information are you hoping to glean from this?

Focus on choosing the area that works best for you, then on choosing the most suitable house you can afford in that area. That's what matters, not what percentage of houses are SSTC.

Yes. Area 1 is exceptionally popular, area 2 less so.

The ratio of sales to houses for sale is 1:6 ish at the moment in many places across the country, so your two areas are doing really well.

I am sure someone will come along and correct me if I am wrong, but once contracts are exchanged the adverts get pulled completely from Rightmove.

I have always wondered if it's because people can figure out the state of the housing market if they can look at an advert with all its particulars against the actual sold price on Rightmove and Land Registry.

Mine was listed as sstc for months after completion. A couple of agents round here seem to like to leave ads up for ages so it looks like they are selling more houses

The land registry sold price won't appear for several months though. There's a significant backlog, so some agents are in no hurry to take listings down.

And the SSTC ratio might also be telling you other things. E.g. that houses in one area take longer to complete and therefore spend longer SSTC than in the other area. Or that the agents in that area leave the adverts up after completion.