Thanks to property friend Vanessa Warwick of Property Tribes, I came across this article today about an increase in activity in Welsh property over the third quarter this year, specifically relating to home purchases.

Despite the increase, the figures are still down on a year ago, but I for one choose to interpret the information as good news. Nonetheless I shall be interested to dig deeper and find out more detail about the increased activity. Where the sales are happening, what types of properties are being sold, so on and so forth, the usual type of research and digging that is useful when making investment decisions.

The statistics say that 2,300 first-time buyers (FTBs) bought a home during this quarter. What I find particularly interesting is that the Welsh FTBs needed an average 15% deposit, rather than the a deposit averaging 20% that they would have needed elsewhere in the UK. So that presumably makes Wales an easier place to buy a first home. And when it comes down to affordability, mortgage payments account for 19.1% of FTB income in Wales, compared with 20.1% in the rest of the UK.

Having got a little bit excited about the uplift, I read through the original Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) article on lending in Wales which looked at the data for the last few years. Since 2009, the third quarter has seen an increase on the second quarter, followed by a dip in the fourth quarter.

So what do you reckon? Are we on an upward trend or is this a seasonal norm for the Welsh property market?