Housing Market Slides Again
The monthly RICS survey reports housing market activity at its lowest rate since records began. Buyers either can’t or won’t buy, maybe waiting for prices to go even lower. However, the number of buyers registering with estate agents is showing a small increase.
The housing market is showing little sign of bottoming out yet. Figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) show that house sales are at their lowest level since records began 30 years ago.
RICS said that the average number of houses each of its members sold in the last quarter was just 15.3, which is over 30% down on a year ago, and at the lowest point since records began in 1978.
The monthly surveyors’ survey shows that the unwillingness of potential house buyers to take the plunge is continuing – or maybe people simply can’t afford to move in these difficult times of high house prices and rising household bills.
One surveyor from RICS, in Oldham, said that June was the worst month he’d seen for buyer activity, and the cancellation rate is high as people struggle to raise finances or lose confidence in the market.
It appears that sellers are still reluctant to reduce their asking prices, despite the overwhelming evidence of falling house prices all around them. Buyers either can’t buy or won’t buy in the current climate.
Halifax’s house price index last week indicated that house prices had fallen £20,000 from the peak in summer 2007. House builders are cutting back their building programmes, cutting jobs and trying to sell their current stock with attractive deals, such as paying customers’ mortgages or, in a bizarre new twist, even taking a car in part-exchange!
An estate agent in North Yorkshire described the market as the most depressed he’s known it in 30 years, with no sign that it will improve this year.
However, there is one glimmer of light. For the second month in a row RICS members have indicated a slight increase in the number of buyers registering with estate agents. Some of them may be investors looking for bargains, but at least if they’re looking them may be thinking that prices can’t go much lower.
