Asking prices on Rightmove dropped for the third month in a row, the portal reported this morning.
The average asking price of a property new to the market is now £234,858, down from August’s £236,260. Property coming to the market is £11,000 cheaper than it was three months ago.
Despite the 0.6% monthly drop, asking prices are still – just – ahead of last year, by 0.7%.
More interestingly, asking prices are unchanged from five years ago. In September 2007, the month of the run on Northern Rock, they stood at £235,176.
Miles Shipside, housing market analyst at Rightmove, said: “This year’s extended summer holiday period has left new sellers’ asking prices almost the same as a year ago and, intriguingly, five years ago too.
“In truth, the state of the housing market is little different now to this time last year, and prices have stagnated as neither buyers or sellers have been forced to change their behaviour in sufficient quantities to stimulate greater activity.
“However, back in 2007, few would have believed that house prices would still be the same in five years’ time.
“This would have been in the context of the previous five-year period to 2007 seeing an average rise of 55%.
“Equally hard to predict would be the extreme changes the housing market has undergone.
“While the average new seller’s asking price has remained virtually the same since September 2007, market conditions are much changed. They are patchy and localised and vary markedly for the many different buyer and seller segments.”
He said that credit crunch winners included home owners in London, where prices have shot up 18.7% in the last five years to stand at £456,237, and cash-rich house buyers.
Credit crunch losers included people in the North, those trying to down-size to release equity for retirement, people with insufficient equity or in negative equity who were unable to fund their next move, and tenants wanting to buy but unable to save for a deposit.
Rightmove asking prices are still far higher than Land Registry, Nationwide and Halifax selling prices. Halifax is currently quoting £160,256, Nationwide £164,729 (both for August) and Land Registry £162,900 for July.
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Comments
Just checekd HAppy, that house is still on at the same price as it was yesterday, dam agents must be overpriced.
I've just seen a price on rightmove that was the same as that at 11;30 this morning, must be over priced, its still there.
That is my point Happy, Vendors and Lenders are being given incorrect advice on value by someone even when no agent is involved.
I can find a property 200 miles from where I live and spot that it is overvalued and the vendors are chasing the market down but 10% behind the ball.
Agents really don't want to take on the expense of instructions like that one and I personally don't think the vendor is helped much by firms that will take on such properties for a fee.
Perhaps it is now possible to see that it is vendors rather than agents who are the ones getting it wrong. Agents that chase over value instructions or pander to vendor ego or greed simply deserve a resister full of not sold , no fee properties.
Perhaps Vendors that list their over priced properties with online, upfront fee, marketers deserve to be separated from the cash they are so desperate to keep hold of.
@ Ummm, nope I can't explain why that property is priced as it is, however it was on higher 2 years ago.
Perhaps the owner has Mewed to the eyeballs
I can find many over priced properties on the portals marketed by both traditional and online agents. At the end of the day it's the vendor sets the asking price.
@W Note: I didnt say a majority of vendors i said many, you may will be surprised at how may people look at properties that go on the market in their area, either via portals or acually going to view it particularly when they selling or planning to.
Internal condition makes a house more sellable but does not increase value that much, as long as its structurally sound" direct from a local traditional agent.
I had 2 estate agents give a market appraisal of my property I was bang on the money on what they would market it at. Perhaps i am just a good guesser eh
I also draw the line at X-Factor Jonnie, although I'm back here 'cos our wee one thinks 5.30 is the best time to begin the day...
The point I'm trying to make is that these boom-bust cycles don't turn overnight, they take years. People think this one has been happening slowly, but in length it's not even on par with the previous crash. As stated in my post yesterday at 11.49, the up stage of the cycle this time was much bigger, fuelled by 125% mortgages, interest only, liar loans etc. The down stage will therefore be much longer too (note that doesn't necessarily mean that prices will end up far lower, but that the bottom will take longer to reach, probably allowing a chunk of the crash to be masked through wage inflation - which the powers that be are certainly hoping for).
Does the end of this one look near? Two posters on this thread have commented that the SE is now experiencing minor price falls. Nationally, the crash seems to be gaining momentum, rather than easing. Foreigners piling into London property is preventing this from showing up in the indices though.
Whilst I'm rambling, that London effect means that the big house price reports are presenting a stable picture across the UK that isn't really the case across much of the country. This is keeping some bearish house price headlines out of the media and thus leaving many vendors convinced that peak prices are still achievable. I'd imagine many EAs would welcome some headlines at the moment which say prices are falling across most of the country. You wouldn't get that impression reading the comments on this site though.
It is important that no-one who knows how to value property lets on.
Accurate valuations will be one of the services that sets us above these internet listing bods.
Emoov are talking out of a different orifice
Happy Chappy
"Many vendors know as much about the comparables as the local agent"
No they don't.
Very few vendors will have been keeping an eye on which properties come to market, which ones sold quickly, which didn't.
Very few vendors will have visited any of the properties they consider to be 'comparables', and won't have any clue of their internal condition.
There's a variety of other factors I could go into where the agent will have the edge over the member of the public reading prices off Zoopla
Without an agent in site please explain how no 3 so213ef
is on the market with Emoov a full 10% more than it is really worth. Did Emoov take the local spiv agent +5% and add another 5% on of their own? Did they just accept what the vendor says and take their money for as long as it doesn't sell. Whatever, Emoov won't be losing out and nor will the Agents in Winchester. perhaps the £40 k is for a haggle?
Use every tool available to you and see how much you think that place is worth. It isn't £391k.
@rant
Jesus – Mrs Jonnie, Miss Jonnie, X Factor on Planner so back here as im too old and too non female to watch it.
I feel a bit mean about this but…………………….have you not told us before that this ‘current market / crash / bubble popping / etc is like no other and all of us lot that were very much in it in the period you have stated below shouldn’t consider it the same (God I loved that era, I was a skinny little tosser with a soft top XR3i and not a care in the world, happy days) and not draw comparisons or say things like we’ve been here before etc?
…………………..now here you are drawing comparisons of the last crash and picking the bits you like out of it,
Bad form Rant
Jonnie
1989 Q3 £62,782 Peak
1995 Q4 £50,930 Bottom
Taken from Nationwide's website.
Jonnie - Thanks for the reply, an impressive conversion rate you should shout about it more....yes some vendors are greedy so and so's and with more people owning there property outright than have mortgages many have no reason to not fly the kite and see what they can achieve. Others however have other reasons to sell....im telling you what you already know sorry.
You sound more professional, reasonable and open than some i have encountered on here. Ie the poster below so for him. The comparables are available at local basis, google earth will show you what is in the area around the property, stats on crime are avialable, stats on schools are available. At the end of the day the vendor sets the price which is often inflated when agents (of all types) play to their vendors greed to get the instruction....The first question at valuation/appraisal is have you had a valuations for anyone else? if the answer is yes many will simply add 5% just to get it on the books e-moov probably supply a more accurate market appraisal than these sharks!
p.s you are right it is not my main source of income but it may be soon. :0)
Well Ladies, Gentleman, Mr Cable, Mr Prisk and every Jo Blow who needs a reason why the general public should steer well clear of anyone who relies on historical data to value their property.
Emoov has just proved to the entire world he/she does not know or understand property valuation.
Relying on historical data, relying on generalised UK gloabaised data does nothing for a vendor, and I would see you in court the day you advised me on that basis.
Every single property is different neither you nor any other algorithum can look at a property remotely and value it.
Even RantandRave has started to use the localisation argument to support his point of view. Hopefully he will now understand that it is not agents who are over valuing it is people like you and the vendors whose money you will happily take who are distorting the market by clinging onto historical values based on what happened.
I won't share with you what you are doing wrong but on a falling market your and their values will be High on a rising market yours and their values will be low.
Congratulations, that was your Ratner post!
@Happy
What does it say on your business card – an intermediary to the housing market isn’t a job is it?
Anyway assuming you are not a loon, ill ask you to look at my reply to @emoove which seems to tidy up most of the issues you’ve raised.
Disagree about vendors knowing what they will accept – some have a fixed idea at the start and in time come to realise that they need to change this view, they sometimes need a bloke like me to help them revise their view aswell.
I don’t publish my conversion rates online although I suppose it’s an idea I could whack it on the website, im not sure any of my clients would be all that bothered by it, it’s not the sort of relationship I / we have with them.
Alright with all that?
Jonnie
@emoove
Not sure but I think we are in agreement?
I get your business model, I understand what you are doing and ive said I quite like it so don’t feel you need treat every post like an advert for emoove, if you are that Russell Quirk that owned Quirk Deakin I also know you are a very switched on EA and no fool.
Anyway for the sake of debate, you said that you do not value houses you test the market………………….do you use the data available to all of us to do this/ if so are you not valuing them?
Another point is that I absolutely hate most estate agents but I run a tight ship here, list well and complete on about 75% of what we list – but like you I know what im doing and am not ‘average’ – on the other hand there are EAs I know of that cant shift 20% of what they list
Jonnie
Jonnie,
I am an intermediary to the housing Industry, member of the public vendor.and buyer
@happy chappy.
Before I go on an engage with you can you answer which one of the following you are;
a) Estate agent
b) Mortgage broker
c) Surveyor
d) Auctioneer
e) Solicitor
f) Member of the public
g) Troll / dullard with nothing to do
Jonnie
Jonnie. Happy Chappy makes good points.
The thing is, the internet not only allows agents like us to operate but also provides us, and indeed buyers, oodles of statistical information on local property markets.
I can access Rightmove Plus and HM Land Reg just the same as you do for local valuations.
I suppose my other point is that even local agents with their 'local knowledge' are hardly promoting honesty and accuracy when Rightmove says today that asking prices are the same as five years ago.
This fact, often commented upon by us in the media, rather indicates that despite your assertion that local agents are 'best at valuing', they clearly are not that accurate themselves or else stock would be well priced across the UK portals, would it not?
You can't blame online agents for a 15% disparity between asking prices and achievable prices right now can you?
Jonnie - What exactly is your approach?
Many vendors know as much about the comaparables as the local agent and only the vendor knows what they will and can accept.
Achieved price is not the only metric important to vendor, although to many agents it seems to be the only thing that is imporant.
Do you sell a larger perecentage of your stock than e-move? closer to valuation and in a quicker time?
Do you publish your performance in hese areas on line?
@emoove
I sort of like your approach and id love to have over 700 houses for sale but come on be honest with us all, you’ve got 12 staff I believe? And you are by your own claims ‘national’ so you couldn’t possibly have a detailed understanding of every market you operate in so you have to do a lot of ‘suck it and see’ with your listings as the diversity and volume you deal with means you cant place an accurate price on them.
So, don’t be shy about it – you’ve got a nice business model and you might make a few quid on the back of it but don’t blag us all with this testing the market stuff, you take them at whatever the punter wants then nudge em for a reduction after an agreed period after combing through the local data of Rightmove Plus etc to get a handle on what you should be telling them.
Nothing to be ashamed of.
Jonnie
Hello commenters :-)
Few can deny that agents over value in order to win instructions. Many of us online agents used to work for High St agents, you know.
Valuation is certainly not about algorithms and formulae. If only mostestate agents were even that resourceful other than turning up and asking the seller 'What do you want for it' and simply agreeing.
Our approach? It's not to 'value' houses rather to test the market at a figure and then in an open and honest way, to discuss price adjustments in accordance with market reaction.
It's the market itself and the buyers within it that dictate sale price. Not the agent. And whose role is simply to accurately REFLECT the likely price that will be achieved.
Maybe that's why we sell a greater percentage of our stock than the average agent though?
RentnRave is wrong again.
Prices reached bottom in just over 3.5 years in the last crash, and then bumped along the bottom for another 4 years.
http://johncato.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Nationwide-Average-House-Price-UnAdjusted-1952-to-Aug-2012.jpg
He has read one website from someone no-one has ever heard of.
Go and look at the facts from the Land registry which show a sawtooth rapid drop both then and in 2008.
Muppet Jo might take a few years to catch, a bit like those Private investors in the stock market who don't know the trigger points.
http://www.lovemoney.com/news/property-and-mortgages/buying-and-selling-property/133/the-last-housing-crash
You must have got some source of evidence, quote it, let us check it out. Otherwise be content to be wrong and be happy that everyone knows that you are wrong and making things up as you go along.
poo flys have been on the earth longer than humans and will be here long after what makes you think they will go away.
Peak to trough in the last housing crash was seven years. On that scale, we're not even halfway through this one. They went up for much longer this time than they did in the late 80s too.
@ Trafford, they do it to give Rant and crew a platform to be clever, little point otherwise, and only stuprid folk like Jonnie post to given them more room, leave them alone and like a poo fly they will buzz off!
@rant
Sorry moonbeam but you are now switching to local indices, that's bad form and you know it is, we are talking national / non region specific numbers, you can't debate on the back of local, in fact you're using one street!?
come on, one or the other, and this is national here today, so let's all sing off the same hymn sheet
Jonnie
Newsflash.... Rant agrees with Agent, Read all about it.
If the overall maket year on year on year according to Land registry is showing no more than £2000 variation on the average house price for 4 years, a compound fall of a whopping 1.2% across the board, would you care to calculate just how many cuts it is going to take. 7 years to loose another 10%, 15 years to lose 20%! Lets agree that 25% is a crash, Jeepers mate you are going to be the poor bugger caught out in the downsizing trap and the rest of us will be dead!
Depends where you are...
When I came back to blighty in '08, the neighbour had his place on the market for 130K. No takers. A year later, still no takers. By that point, they were a family of four in a two-bed semi. In 2011 they sold it for sub 105K. There are now several almost identical properties on that street for asking prices of just under 100K, so selling prices 95K? That's a crash...
This is in the Midlands. Up north is reportedly similar, as is Wales. Northern Ireland much, much more spectacular. So far, the South East hasn't experienced those kind of drops. It would be a brave call to say they are never going to happen there though. Sure, it's happening slowly, but interest rates are at record lows and money is being printed to slow things down. A crash by a thousand cuts, rather than one fell swoop. I think the latter would be best for the country in the medium-term, but instead this is going to be dragged out for years, maybe decades. I don't think we'll see peak 2007 nominal prices until at least 2020.
Get it right
www.housepricecrashbutnotaroundherewherethey havegoneupabit.com
www.weegotitwrong.com is available and a bit snappier than the other one
trouble is.... it is all a bit localised to have one site.
@rant
The thing is mate, 5 years ago you would have been telling us that any price stats would now be way, way down................and theyre not are they?
Like I said last week you HPC guys have been waiting to be proven right for a very long time, your moment might yet come but so far the drops haven't been exactly crash like have they? And certainly nowhere near the levels you predicted 5 years ago, also you can't do that inflation based thingy, you wouldn't have in 2007, you predicted proper YOY drops on all the indices of 20/30%
You will need to rename that website of yours www.housepricedriftdownabitbutnotthatmuch.co.uk
Jonnie
@emoov you said
"often fuelled by over optimistic valuations by agents"
Try this take your property or one you know well and then get valuation estimates from Zoopla, Findaproperty, Calnea,Rigtmove etc.
Unless you live in a 3 bed semi somewhere there are lots of transactions the "values" are all over the place.
Prospective vendors are coming to agents armed with hard fact evidence (or so they think) why their home is worth 10 or 20% more than the local expert recommends.
Property Valuation is not just a case of coming up with a clever mathematical algorithum based on comparable evidence, it requires a local knowledge of every property, its condition, it neighbourhood and every factor which Jo Public considers when buying a home.
These valuation tools can't see collapsed drains, the Avacado Bathroom suite and the round pin bus stop wiring system, nor too can they smell the distinctive pong of damp. When these valuation tools which Vendors rather than agents are using to justify high valuations are able to do what an Agent on the ground can do then they are worth using.
I suggest you don't try to stir the "Agents overcharge" argument when I am guessing you and the sellers that use your services are simply parasiting the work of a agent. If Mr Cable wants to open up the market then perhaps he will consider regulating those who are advising on value in the same way as the FSA regulate mortgage and investment advice.
Emoov.co.uk - Correct me if i'm wrong but don't "pretend estate agents" like your company list their properties for sale on rightmove as well?
Some of the most ridiculous prices I see are for properties on the market with online "agents".
"However, back in 2007, few would have believed that house prices would still be the same in five years’ time."
Mr. Shipside is apparently unaware of the difference between asking and sold prices.
He has a point to a certain extent though. By 2007, a lot of people were finally waking up to the fact that the housing market was in a bubble. Back then there were voices saying house prices wouldn't be the same in five years time - they would be lower. Sold prices are of course lower.
Many Boomers looking to downsize at peak prices have missed the boat. That's not stopping them trying though.
Doesn't this just show the gigantic disconnect between sellers' (asking) price expectations, often fuelled by over optimistic valuations by agents, and actual selling prices?
The Halifax has sold prices as down 15% on 2007.
No wonder the market is locked up.
Go figure....
I tend to agree with Trafford but would also make a couple of other comments.
Property values in my area, South East England are way below where they were 5 years ago as August 2007 was the peak of the market. Prices here are much closer to the end of 2005. Does that mean that everyone is just asking too much??
Why quote Wrongmove anyway? Their figures purely quote asking prices. If you want to use VERY accurate figures I would suggest using the data from The Land Registry as it is entirely factual and includes all the region variations.
I am not normally critical of EAT but why publish this story Ros? I can understand you publishing PR stories from your advertisers but unless I am mistaken Rightmove doesn't spend any of it's vast revenues supporting EAT, LAT or Angels Media does it?
This is a non story which says nothing, but worse still it is based on the notion that what Rightmove says is correct.
Some Prices are up some prices are down and even within small geograhical areas the market is different. Making sweeping statements about the market does no-one any good other than the bloke who wants to get his company name in the press.