Bequest numbers up 7% but values falling slightly as housing market cools

Headlines from Legacy Monitor Q2 2024

Legacy income received by consortium members in the latest year to June 2024 was £1.83bn, which is up 1% on the previous year.
Income growth has been driven primarily by growth in bequest numbers which have grown 7% since last year, reaching 62,100 bequests.
The growth in bequests is primarily as a result of continuing improvements in the probate process at HM Courts and Tribunals Service who are continuing to process more grants than applications so they are reducing the backlog of cases.
Average gift values for residual gifts have fallen slightly to £64,400, as a result of the cooling housing market. Pecuniary gift values continue to remain static as they have done for the past year.
Looking forwards, the increased numbers of bequests coming out of the probate process and a less pessimistic outlook for house prices means that we expect the legacy market to remain resilient and show slow growth for the remainder of 2024.

Thank you to our member charities for agreeing to share top-line legacy performance data with the sector, allowing information and insight to be shared more widely. The next quarterly data will become available in November 2024.

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Legacy Monitor is a consortium research programme to analyse, benchmark and debate trends in the legacy market. Set up in 2008, it incorporates an annual review of trends in the legacy market, and a quarterly benchmarking service. This year’s programme benchmarks 81 of the UK’s leading charities, who together account for almost half of the legacy market.

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