Home cost ‘bounce’ is missing as prices fall
THE usual autumn house price bounce has failed to materialise, with sellers in Wales asking for around £6,176 less in September typically than in August, according to new figures.
The Welsh fall was the UK’s sharpest percentage decrease, dropping by 3.3% from £187,407 in August to reach £181,231 on average this month.
Across Wales and England together, the average price tag on a property coming on to the market fell by 1.2%, or £3,660 month on month – marking the first monthly decrease for this time of year since 2013.
Property website Rightmove, which released the figures, said a large 2.9% or £18,358 monthly price drop in London has helped push average asking prices down.
The average price tag on a London property is now £610,912, down from £629,270 in August. High-end parts of the capital have seen average asking prices plunge by more than £300,000 since August.
The average asking price of a home across England and Wales was £310,003 in September. Rightmove said that if London was removed from the figures, asking prices across Wales and England – the area covered by its index – would have seen a smaller average fall of 0.5%. Highend boroughs in London in particular are going through a price readjustment.
In Kensington and Chelsea, the average asking price on a home was pushed under the £2m mark between August and September.
In August, the average asking price there was £2,153,871 but by September it had fallen to £1,845,692 – a fall of 14.3%, or £308,179, in the space of a month.
Robert McLaughlin, sales director at Kinleigh Folkard and Hayward in London, who was quoted in Rightmove’s report, said: “We’ve advised sellers in many locations across London that the current market requires sensible and realistic pricing.
“Pockets of high demand still exist, but tend to be concentrated around specific streets, schools and transport hubs.”
Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, said: “Estate agents are clearly advising many sellers that they have to lower their price expectations to fit in with buyers’ stretched resources, with that price compromise hopefully generating extra interest.”
Rightmove said that while affordability constraints are a major factor in the slowing pace of price rises, demand for the right housing at the right price remains strong, with the numbers of sales being agreed by estate agents up by 4.8% on a year ago – including London, which is performing strongly at 5.6% up despite its large monthly price fall.
Despite falls in Wales and London, the North-East of England and Yorkshire and the Humber bucked the trend, with asking prices there increasing month on month, by 0.5% and 0.2% respectively.