Housing transactions tumbled by nearly 20%, according to latest Land Registry data, but average prices in England and Wales crept up by a 0.1% whisker.
It put the average house price in June at £161,777 – up very slightly on the month before and 0.9% higher than in June last year.
Land Registry transaction data for April – the latest available – shows that there were just 41,244 house sales, down from 50,721 in April of 2011, a fall of 19%.
While the Land Registry house price figure is skewed yet again by London house prices, a separate report by Hometrack says that in July, the slowdown has finally hit the London market.
Hometrack this morning said that while London was the only region across the country to register a house price rise in July, this was just 0.1%. Furthermore, demand slid in London, with new applicant registrations down by 2.4%, against a national dip in demand of 2.1%.
According to the Land Registry, in June London prices shot up 6.3% over the last year and 0.2% over the month, to stand at an average of £359,476. By comparison, house prices in Yorkshire & The Humber were 0.3% down over the month and 1.9% down over the year.
However, it was the housing market in Wales that experienced the highest monthly growth, says the London Registry, at 2.5%, followed by the North-East (1.7%), West Midlands (1.4%) and North-West (1.1%).
The latest transaction data – covering January to April this year – also shows a rise. There was an average of 47,242 sales per month in this period, compared with 43,686 a month during the same period last year.
However, transactions in April itself plummeted. Sales volumes in every single price bracket dipped apart from in the £800,000 to £1m range, where they went up by just 3%.
Some of the steepest falls were in first-time buyer territory, where transactions fell 20% in the £100,000 to £150,000 bracket, and by 25% in the £151,000 to £250,000 bracket. April was the first full month since the Stamp Duty holiday for first-time buyers ended.
Noticeably too, in April, the first full month since Stamp Duty shot up to 7% on £2m-plus properties, the number of homes selling for this amount fell by 40% compared with April 2011, standing at 114 transactions against 191.
However, the effect of the Stamp Duty hike is still hard to evaluate since sales of £1m-plus properties also fell, and by even more: by 41% in the £1.5m-£2m price bracket, and by 48% in the £1m-£1.5m bracket.
While the Land Registry reported a slight upturn in average house prices in June, Hometrack reports a slight downturn – of 0.2% – which it says is the first fall this year.
Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said that while buyer demand has fallen, levels of supply continue to grow.
He said: “The gap between supply and demand is set to widen over the summer months and points to further modest price falls through the summer and autumn.”
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Comments
Andy , well there are some try 500,000 people.
Repos only sell below the market as most are sold via the Corporate cartell in bed with the lenders. I have an idea for a new business to help those undersold sue the lenders, anyone want a share, could be bigger than rightmove??
PS Property is still selling, ignore those who do not know what they are talking about despite some pretty words cut and pasted.
I demand (while thumping fist down furiously on the desk) to pay 500k for a rabbit hutch in a dump of an area.Ha ha.
There is no DEMAND by people wanting to pay silly over-valued prices for houses as is evident by these statistics.
TAREP - you appear to be confsuing desire with demand.
Lots of people I know would love to own a sports car. None of them have access to anywhere near the funds they would need though. Still, they dream...
When Ferrari are putting together their projected sales figures, I am fairly certain they do not factor these people into their calculations.
4 bed detached new build, about 15 years old, in Waverley Drive, Mumbles, Swansea on for a year or more at, IIRC, 320Kish originally. Slowly came down to 270K asking price and stuck there this year.. until it went to auction.
Originally bought in, IIRC, 2004/05 for 245K. Went at auction last week for 215K. Almost bid on it myself.
Terraced town house mere yards away just came on for 315K asking price with one of the, IMPO, more optimistic estate agents. Best of luck with that.
Define demand please
Is it
a) people that want to own a house sometime in their life?
b) people that want to buy/move a house and can get credit to pay for it?
c) people that want to buy, are willing to pay the current prices and are proceedable?
Now look at the headline one or more of the demands is falling, my bet is it isn't a).
But you are right there will not be a crash as there are not many forced sales, and no signs of interests rates increasing to cause this. However if people dont need to sell why are they putting there property on the market?
However, no amount of type a) demand will increase prices. Only type b) demand will increase prices. which is depenadant on loan expansion at high LTV from banks, which is not possible right now.
This stalemate does not bode well for transaction levels
p.s. Repos go at a lot less than 10% of the comps in the area.
There will be no crash, as people currently DO NOT HAVE TO SELL. Unless interest rates sky rocket, there will be little if any adjustment to prices.
As a few have mentioned..... SUPPLY & DEMAND;
There is still masses of demand, (eg all the people on this site wishing house prices would crash so they can buy!), but at a certain price point. This changes. This market would boom once again tomorrow if LTV's were higher. Why did it stop in 2007, because banks werent able / couldnt afford to lend anymore. not because there was no demand.!!!
Remember: Everyone still knows property is one of the best long term assets you can buy and the majority of vendors know that. They dont have to sell, so therefore dont need to reduce the price.
Repossesions: People fight for them day in day out at 10% less than the asking price. Hence DEMAND!!!
I am going to buy one just to anoy you Dave!
anyone who buys a house is buying at the top of a huge bubble.
prices are likely to drop for 20 years
if thats okay for you go ahead,but don't say you weren't warned
google japan credit bubble for examples of what will happen next
@ THE TRUTH
You are aware that interest rates have been at 0.5% for as long as anyone can remember and that the talk in the w/end papers was an imminent reduction to 0.25% I assume?
Just remember all who wish for a price fall (never mind a crash) - you will not, unless you are cash buyers, be able to borrow to buy anyway
If you bought a house recently then I'm afraid you are an anomaly and one of the last fools sucked into a game that's already over.
DO
NOT
FEED
THE
TROLL
Errr they were not my own opinions more statements of stats and facts, to validate others opinions . I am happy to be persuaded that the observations are wrong....I think you need to look up self opinionated in the dictionary.
Slappy - Normal self-opinionated twaddle I see.
Despite being a happy chappy I have to agree with points 1,2,4&5 of the truths post
As for Europeans renting... yes 60% of Germans rent
and they have rent control which prevents rents rising quickly. As for the cry of if you cant afford it work harder
Lets look at affordability
In europe at one extreme there were a number of member states where a relatively small proportion of the population live in households that had housing costs in excess of 40 % of their disposable income, notably Cyprus (2.4 %), France (3.4 %), Malta (3.5 %), Luxembourg (3.7 %), Slovenia (3.9 %), Ireland (4.0 %), Estonia and Finland (both 4.4 %). At the other extreme, almost one quarter of the population in Denmark (24.4 %) and Greece (22.1 %) spent more than 40 % of their equivalised disposable income on housing, well above the next highest shares recorded in the United Kingdom (16.3 %) and Romania (15.5 %).
Deposits
You need to consider given average first-time buyer house prices and the typical mortgages advanced on them, the average low-to-middle income household putting aside 5 per cent of their disposable income each year would haven take 31 years to save an appropriate deposit in 2010, up from just eight years in 1983
Perhaps goverment policy should follow the German model then.? I.e rent control and stable house prices then look to have policies grow the real economy rather than mantain and protect asset prices.
It wont though so 6 and 7 of the Truths points will not happen so stagnation will continue.
Goodness me the poor soul posting as the Truth lives in a very dark world, I can say not one bit of that applies to the majority, get real or get a shrink !
Rent slavery? Why do people think it is a god given right for everybody to have a house.
If you can't afford it, you have to work harder, just like everything else in life.
The vast majority of younger europeans rent their property and I dont think they would consider thermselves to be in "rental slavery" if you asked them.
Anonymous Coward: 'Worth £160-165k to a member of the public, not a penny more than £150k to a rental investor (needs £10k minimum spent on it and would rent for about £800pcm).'
Those figures are truly insane and consign the next generation to poverty and rent slavery all their lives. I do hope this bubble bursts and investors lose their shirts.
Mortgage approvals and lending slumped in June, Bank of England data showed, reflecting broader economic weakness due to extra public holidays and wet weather"
Or in English " We have fooled some of the people for some time, we can't fool all the people all the time", better start looking for some new mugs to sell their magic beans to !
HA HA HA .The plates balancing on the poles are coming crashing down despite the best efforts of this useless. inept, clueless PATHETIC government. Just wait till October to February and it get really interesting then ; ).
"My house has gone up in value"...."Yeah really ? Shame no-one else thinks so. Go tell it to the Spartans".Massive HPC due to :
1: Wage inflation is non existent...
2: Job security is rapidly becoming non existent...
3: People cant pay high rents if they don't have a job or are on low wages - benefit caps mean the government (rightly) wont pay a BTL'ers mortgage/agency fees/profit margin unless Mum and Dad are able to dilute their savings/re-mortgage/are loaded...
4: There are no first time buyers able to afford the silly prices people expect to receive for their current properties....
5: Young people will be weighed down with educational debt and will also receive less in the way of salary in real terms...
6: Interest rates are likely to go up in the next 5 years and may well have to go very high - or we end up like Japan, either way very few will have the money to buy property and even fewer will want to take the risk given the likely economic situation if rates do rise or we continue to kill off the real economy to aid current home owners (the banks)...
7: Housing has been in a bubble and all bubbles pop eventually and this one is about to burst big time.
I had a cracker today...
1 bed garden flat in poor condition, probate, executors having done a very swift and poor quality paint job.
Worth £160-165k to a member of the public, not a penny more than £150k to a rental investor (needs £10k minimum spent on it and would rent for about £800pcm).
Last flat I sold there took me ages at £156,000. The executor showed me 2 valuation letters at £185-190,000.
They didn't believe them thankfully and were happier with my much lower sensible price.
This is getting beyond a joke!
I've got a goldfish called Bob, he can sy his own name too.
It is all about volume.
Volume is now crashing which means asking prices will soon tumble off the cliff.
It is August this week - barely 2 months left to sell your house this year if you are a house seller or to generate enough sales to survive the winter if you are an estate agent.
Too many sellers and estate agents have left it too late to drop the asking prices. I expect to see a big rise in estate agents going bust this winter.
and why do you all see the need to post the bleeding obvious?? Pathetic!
When I gather information from several agents in order to undetake a monthly property 'return', I ask naturally how manry they have "sold" this month, followed by "and how many of last month's sales have fallen through?" Answer is there none!
Agents just can't wait to get a STC board up and then undertake a (meaningless) 'board count'. They don't brag about it when they fall through though!
Agents are defintely having a tough time but many are making the best of it and are managing to keep the wolf from the door.
Anon 10:19
Perhaps they mean 'record low'. Semantics, innit.
It’s brilliant actually. Every EA I speak to always just had a record month. This is despite the fact that transactions in my area have slumped.
I mean it’s not like EA’s all lie through their teeth as a matter of habit.
Who needs transactions?
So long as prices stay high everyone is a winner!
...............and this is news????