Central Belt house sales buck UK trend
● Edinburgh and Glasgow sellers wait half mean UK time as Aberdeen stalls
The time needed to sell homes in Glasgow and Edinburgh is half the average for UK cities, a survey has revealed.
Zoopla’s UK Cities House Price index for September reveals housing market conditions are strongest north of the Border despite Aberdeen being the worst performer.
Glasgow and Edinburgh properties sell within six weeks on average, compared with 12 weeks across the whole of the UK.
Aberdeen was the worst performer, with homes taking more than 15 weeks to sell and sellers discounting their homes by 9.4 per cent.
Richard Donnell, research and insight director at Zoopla, said: “There is a continued polarisation in housing market conditions across the country set by underlying market fundamentals, albeit Brexit uncertainty has been a compounding factor for lower market activity in some areas.
“A general election seems to be a growing possibility ahead of any Brexit resolution. However, once the political outlook becomes clearer we would expect a modest bounce-back in demand for a six to 12-month period.
“Market conditions are set to remain weak in southern cities until pricing levels adjust to what buyers are willing, or can afford, to pay.
“London is three years into a re-pricing process and we expect sales volumes to slowly improve over 2020, while house price growth remains subdued. There are large parts of the country where housing affordability remains attractive, fuelled by continued economic growth that supports demand for homes, resulting in reasonable sales periods and only modest gaps between sales and asking prices.”
Glasgow and Edinburgh are also the only UK cities not to register a discount from asking to selling price.
Homes in the two locations instead command an average premium of 6 to 7 per cent above the asking price.
In contrast, vendors across the UK now accept offers that are on average 3.8 per cent or £9,800 lower than the initial asking price.
The report said Aberdeen was continuing to feel the effects of the oil price collapse, with average home values £46,969 lower in the Granite City compared with mid-2015.
Market conditions were also weak in both London and Oxford.
In London, residential properties now take 14 and a half weeks to sell, which is more than a month (5.3 weeks) longer than in 2016.
Sellers in the London market are accepting offers from buyers that are on average 5.7 per cent below their asking price, up from just 1.8 per cent in 2016.
The time to sell a home across UK cities has hit a three year-high, with residential properties taking nearly a month longer to sell than they did three years ago.