Homeowners who are desperate to sell are facing an uphill battle, a new report by Rightmove warns.
The average home is now on the market for more than 100 days, the longest amount of time ever logged by the property information website in its eight year existence. In February this year, it took just over 60 days to sell a house but the time frame has been gradually increasing ever since.
One of the directors at Rightmove, Miles Shipside, said that anybody who needs to sell urgently, such as those who are moving home, may need to resort to bargain basement prices.
In the last month, the average house price has fallen by 3.2% to £229,379; that’s the largest monthly decrease since December 2007. This fall equates to a cut of £7,470 in only four weeks!
At this time of year the housing market generally slows down as people turn their minds to the festive season. But this year the problem is made worse by high supply, the lack of available contractor mortgage finance and the shaky state of the UK economy.
As always there are regional disparities. People in the East Midlands have seen prices drop by an average 5.4% to £159,490 and those in the South West have witnessed a decrease of 4.9%, reducing the price of an average home to £247,029.
Last week the RICS reported that the amount of home owners who have secured a sale has nearly halved. Normally, estate agents sell 26.8 homes over a three month period, but this has now collapsed to 15.2.
Zoopla.co.uk, the property website, also reported recently that about £500 million has been slashed from asking prices since the start of August. Typically, buyers have knocked off an average £16,000 from their original asking price. However, a lot have had to drop their price several times by anything up to 30%!
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