House prices fell 0.8% in February, to finish the month 1.7% lower than February 2010, the Land Registry has reported.
The average house price in England and Wales is now £162,215 – in line with Nationwide and Halifax surveys, but a long way detached from Rightmove’s asking prices.
Rightmove’s current asking price is £231,790. By coincidence, while actual house prices fell 0.8% according to the Land Registryin February, asking prices rose 0.8% for properties new to the market on Rightmove between mid February andmid March..
Sales volumes averaged 56,257 per month from September to December 2010, says the Land Registry. This is a fall from the 65,939 average for the same period 12 months before this.
In the month of December itself, there were just 54,812 transactions, down an astonishing 30% from the figure of 78,438 in December 2009. Both sets of figures are way below the norm: in December 2006, more than 122,000 homes changed hands.
House prices showed a dramatic divergence in London, where they shot up 3.2% between February 2010 and 2011, despite a 0.5% drop in the month – against the national trend.
The biggest monthly fall was in the North-East, where house prices dropped 4% in the month, and 7.1% in the year.
Housing pundit Henry Pryor said there is now a house price recession.
He said: “Prices continued their slide in February, falling 0.8% on the month before, the sixth consecutive monthly fall in a row.
"That's two continuous quarters of negative growth or the accepted definition of a recession when talking about national output.”
*The number of loan approvals given for house purchase in February was 46,967 – very slightly higher than the previous six-month average of 46,413 and showing almost no change year on year.
Figures from the Bank of England show that approvals for remortgaging stood at 35,725, a big rise on the previous six-month average of 31,674, and 35% higher than the figure of 26,469 in February 2010.
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Comments
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I would say 2007 inline with the national audit confirming last October (2010 if you didn't know when last October was, lol.) Having said that wasn't the NE hit by 30%.
I wish we had plenty of buyers for £600 - £900K. I could then get my new Mercedes. Just goes to show the affordability is now a vast divide between the North and South.
25% since when? November 2007 or April 2006
EVERYTHING inside me tells me that if prices in your area have not fallen by 25% then you are still in the middle of a property price bubble - it is just taking longer to burst.
I work in Surrey (part inside and part outside the M25)and it is a market split in 4.
Below £300k - ouch, now that's painful - only sales completing are between VERY motivated vendors and either investors offering LOW or FTBs tapping the bank of mum & dad but at a big price reduction.
£300-£600k - lots of sales being agreed at 10% below asking, many falling through.
£600-900k - not doing too badly actually, buyers usually in rented, often kicking themselves for getting out of the market in 2008 (for a low price) and feeling they have no choice but to jump back in now at a higher price having wasted a bucketload of cash in the middle.
£900k+ - very area specific, great if you have a good house in a good road, but awful otherwise. There are so few REAL buyers at this price range at the moment that 3-4 houses on the market in the same price bracket completely screws the market.
No it's not - down 0.1% Month-on-Month and down 3.2% Year-on-Year according to the Hometrack report out today. Of course, this is unseasonally adjusted data, but I imagine you are referring to the seasonally adjust info from Nationwide?
"Prices rose for the third month in a row" that is the news this morning.
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But still more accurate than picking random un-named areas for the purpose of your argument.
Having become accepted as our least bonkers visitor, perhaps you will agree to that 1 small consession, it is our site after all.
That is tricky - I have recently become aware that the Land Reg changed their calculation methods in 2006 making precise comparisons difficult.
Another awesome post there F-FS!
C'mon Rant, Jonnie already told you not to keep moving the goalposts. Let's stick with HPI from land registry shall we?
Note how Henry Pryor has gone from expert to pundit in just a few weeks, this has to be a sign of general property deflation! All too soon it will be Henry Pryor; junior neg!
Ray, if you were a first time buyer a few years ago, and have no equity and a mortgage 4-6 times your salary, then you should buckling down and paying off your mortgage! You shouldnt be moving unless you absolutely have to! If you are in that group, then its just tuff, you will be stuck with your house for a few years and its not the end of the world. You certainly shouldnt be thinking of trading up.
If you are not in that group, (and there are more than just a few!), and simply moving to a similar (or higher) value property, then house price falls are actually beneficial. Obviously, if you are trading down then you are not going to like the value of the asset falling but you will grin and bear it!
Ray Evans:
The statistics say 40% of houses have no mortgage at all and a great many more have small rather than large mortgages. So I don't agree with what you say about no-one being able to sell. It's true that mortgage-free older people move less often than families, so many we see are not in that position, but while I agree there are a good chunk of people facing negative equity and can't move (just like in the 90s) there are still large numbers - easily the majority I would say - who are not so constrained and will be open to the logic of lower prices.
In reality, in addition to those above who are stuck in negative equity, lower prices will directly hurt relatively few people, mainly older people trading down, BTL landlords, or couples divorcing. Some of the latter two, I accept, are in deep doo-doo at the moment as many will have bought relatively recently.
But many of the people I deal with are not in these 'big loser' categories. In addition to the downsizers, they are would-be FTBs, people relocating, or families trading up, and for them there is more likely to be a benefit from the coming lowering of prices rather than a loss.
What's blocking the market for these categories isn't shortage of cash, it's the unrealistic current level of asking prices, which is what's driving the other big blockers, big deposits and lender parsimony.
Jaffa:
No I don't think there will be price rises from here any time soon. The engine that lifted prices so high - crazy lending - has gone away and isn't coming back. The boom-time madness (let's be frank) was a 5-year abberation, not a 'new normal'. Medium term, perhaps, I see your point but I think that's years away.
The question for us as a profession is: what do we do right now to stay in business and support our customers through this difficult time of adjustment?
Depends which part of the country. In real terms, prices in some regions are back to 2004 levels, possibly earlier.
"We're back to 2004 prices" not so! try April 2006 and then December 2009
The reason the property market is in the doldrums is that everybody is skint. End of. When incomes pick up, so will house prices. Considering, thanks to Mervyn, real terms incomes are falling by 5% per year, this could be some time.
swep:
You quote your own personal circumstances - just be thankful you could put down 40% deposit!
Obviously I quoted what was the norm. for many FTB's (not 'everyone') 5-10 years ago - 0% or 5% deposits and 4-6 times salary multiples. It may have been silly but it happened. At the moment many of those people just CANNOT sell as they have not had time to reduce the outstanding balance eneough to move on, even if they wanted to
In my view a substantial reason that the property market is in the doldrums is the attitude of the mortgage providers who have over corrected with extortionate ‘arrangement fees’ and high interest rates if only a 5/10% deposit .
Tthink on.
'' Ray Evans - Vendors will not sell at a greatly reduced price if they have a mortgage that cannot be discharged (probably, due to the downturn, if they purchased during the last 5/10 years on a 25 year mortgage cannot afford to). ''
I disagree entirely. Why do you assume anyone who bought their house in the last 5-10 years cannot discharge their mortgage or wants to see house prices rise/stabilise? I bought my house in 2007- but i put down 40% deposit (i was not a FTB). I now want to move, im realistic and know its worth less than i paid. Obviously i'd like to get as much as i can for it but i also want to shift it in a reasonable length of time. The fact that i'll get less than i paid for it doesnt bother me in the slightest. Why? Because if my house drops 10,15 or even 25%, then everyones else's house will also drop by a similar amount. I certainly am not going to put my life on hold for years because i cant get what i perceive it should be 'worth'. Its only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it. It would only affect me if i was downsizing or had multiple properties- however if that were the case i'd have plenty of equity anyway!
Rant,
I think you’ve got something on your pornography thing, ill have a go at explaining myself.
You see pre internet if you wanted a ‘Banjo Mag’ which was really the main format of porn you had to go to a newsagent a long way from home, shuffle about a bit looking at the top shelf then when the moment was right and the shop was empty, grab your chosen mag and without looking at the assistant buy it, stick it inside your jacket and get out, sharpish.
Of course videos were something your bigger brother and his mates got hold of and by the time you had your copy the resolution was such that the myth about ‘porn use’ and poor eyesight might well have come from the fact that the picture was so fuzzy it made you think you were blind.
But……………..now, well we’ve got the internet, hi res streaming grot available at the click of a mouse, on your phone, downloadable with out the whole pretending your looking at the fishing magazine thing and get your timing right and you can get it on flippin Sky!
And property is the same, pre internet crashes happened, normally in a gradual and slow process and they got a bit on the news bulletins and a slot in the newspapers. Agents talked about it, the people in rented wanted it to happen faster and the vendors denied it was going on. Oh, we also had to wait for and pay for the land reg data in printed form
The thing is now we have the web so forums like this can exist, we’ve got 24 hour news, not just TVAM and the news at 10, there is a million news web sites and information that’s always been there is now available with no effort and we can pass it round all our friends with ease, a bit like porn
But like porn before the net the market is essentially the same, the market will go up and down as will the pants on the lady that answers the door to the pizza man in her nightie its just we can now see the inevitable in Hi Res but that doesn’t mean we can change the pace of it so I suspect that as before the drop will be slow and steady like it always has been, im talking both porno ladies pants and prices, so there’s nothing new, just an easier and better way of viewing it.
Jonnie
HD - To be fair to EAs, this country's media has a lot to answer for in terms of presenting property as a path to riches and only ever increasing in price. The sheer volume of this property pornography has also made a significant contribution the current ridiculous level of asking prices.
Will Hicks - Good point re the auctions. Is 25 to 30% down an accurate reflection of where the market will settle? In previous corrections / crashes, overshoots on the way down have been observed.
WIll Hicks: Before you start agent bashing that we are all Over valuing 'spivs', as an agent we can only offer an honest opinion of what a property is worth, the vendor will ultimately decide the price, after it its their home.
Now of course their are over valuers out there, who's only way of winning business is over valuing. These companies/agents will soon have to change their model.
I am not in anyway saying Im perfect, and unless the vendor wants something ridiculous we will market there property for them. Since HIPS went down the spout, we have been taking a small marketing fee, soon sorts the motivated sellers from the non-motivated. This fee will then come off the final bill.
What is difficult to do though is drive prices down. In a market like this, prices will very slowly drop, takes a lot of people to catch on before it happens.
In my area, we are just starting to see the prices fall ever so slightly, maybe 1% but then we are quite close to London. I see prices correcting to around 10-15% from their currently levels, but this will be another 12-18 months away.
rantnrave...
Land Registry figures do not include properties sold at auction. Auction prices have gone south by 25-30% over the last 3-6 months, and generally are a lead indicator as to what will happen in the "main" rigged & poorly regulated English "market".
At least in Scotland you've got the home report paid up front by the [committed] vendor which contains a survey and [real] surveyor valuation. This helps to keep the wild spiv valuations we get from EAs in England, and allows the vendor to choose an EA (solicitor in Scotland) that gives good value for money and service.
Why we can't have that model here, God only knows.
For me, near zero interest rates have created a 'cartoon chase' moment where 2 characters have run off the edge of the cliff and remain airborne, refusing to look look down, whilst their legs work furiously underneath.
It will be interesting to see how long we can maintain this mirage. Perhaps we can maintain it right through the worst of the recession and cuts and prices can find a genuine floor on the other side that negates the financial crisis of the present moment.
After a positive start in my area we are actually now seeing signs of things slowing
Union unrest, poor market data, gloomy headlines and job insecurity are now having an effect - expect transactions out of London to drop off by 20% at least in the next quarter
While the Land Reg figures are the most comprehensive, gathering that data takes time. It's worth bearing in mind that these figures are from February.
Were back to 2004 sale prices, even earlier in some places, may be more in others (not much though). So if an agent want to market a property purchased since that time your probably wasting your time putting it on for higher. If there in negative equity, there in negative equity period.
Vendors need to stop seeing over inflated houses prices on RightMove for example. This just gives them false hope. Agents need to cull their dead stocks, you aren't going to sell them so why keep them? Saves having bare walls but doesn't feed the kids!
Vendors are waking upto facts at last, as their is "history". If they don't, walk away. Bravely said!!!!
AC's point on mortgage brokers is spot on. Deposit issues aside, available salary multiples are getting smaller.
Since it was low/no deposit and high salary multiple deals that allowed prices to get bid up to the 2007 heights anyway, it doesn't take a genius to work out that there's nothing supporting prices at the (artificial - ie bubble) levels they reached then.
Guess what the consequence of that is? Yes that's right, lower prices.
(Clearly our colleagues within the M25 are exempt from all of the above, as there is no deposit or mortgage shortage there and heaven forbid anyone should suggest there is).
Our job is to sell houses, offering our professional advice and skills in whatever market the sellers find themselves in, to help them sell their homes. No-one wins by us not being open and honest with our vendors.
Our job is NOT to be fairy godmothers waving our wands and producing free money by magic. For too long, a lot of greedy people have seen our role as exactly that!
Just had to check which site I was looking at - much of this thread contains views that have long been expressed on HPC.
Quote: "Is it safe to say that we're on the second leg down and the Dead Cat Bounce peaked in the middle of last year?"
"House prices can only fall so far and we are approaching that level. Vendors will not sell at a greatly reduced price if they have a mortgage that cannot be discharged".
"...... only an idiot could have failed to see that lots of people got in over their heads, unwisely, in the boom years,......"
"....lots & lots more property is going to come on to the market in the coming months which will dilute the prices further and at a faster rate."
"UK economy is on the brink of meltdown & property prices are related to the UK economy & if interest rates rise then its all going to come tumbling down around us, "
"Does anybody on here remember the late 80’s and early 90’s?"
"Prices just have to drop. They haven't yet because no-one is being repossessed I guess. Pray the interest rates don't rise."
Couldn't have said it better, everyone has been treading water the last year. This and next year will sort the men and women out from the boys and girls. There is nothing you can do about it but put a brave face on and PLAN ahead for where you want to be.
As for new instructions, stop kidding yourselves if the hat fits and be brave. Tell the vendor what is what, they do know but don't want to hear it. You will be suprised how many will agree if you do your home work and present it correctly. Your only wasting your time if it is never going to sell.
I am an Estate Agent in the East Midlands and in my opinion, Berkshire, FF-S make by far the most sense. I have no idea how the usual suspects can constantly argue that prices are going to increase (outside of London)?? It's ludicrous given the state of the economy.
Scott, I presume you have no properties available on your books??
I don't know how it works down there but we tend to find that a first time buyer kicks off the beginning of most chains. If first time buyers can't get on the ladder where you are, where are all your buyers coming from?
Anonymous Coward, that's the most sensible comment I've read from an estate agent in a long time!
I'd be interested to know where you are in Surrey, because when I sold my last house in Farnham in 2008 the only sensible, realistic and commercially aware agents I spoke to were those with the initials KF. They valued my property £20K below the other two valuations, and intially I went with a higher valuation and didn't sell - then switched to KF and sold almost immediately at a price close to their initial valuation!
The estate agency business is full of spivs, but when you find one who's prepared to tell you the truth (not what you want to hear) you should go with them, even if the valuation seems low. The worst thing that can happen if the property is under-priced is that you get a bidding war! If you over-price it'll be sitting on the market going stale for months.
No I've just had a very interesting chat with my mortgage adviser...
One of my FTBs can only get 4 x salary to get to £210k.
She reckons that she would easily have got him to £300k before.
She also says that he is squeaky clean, has a good deposit and no skeletons.
To me that looks like a 30% reduction in the amount of money he can afford to spend.
Prices just have to drop.
They haven't yet because no-one is being repossessed I guess.
Pray the interest rates don't rise.
Ok lies damn lies and statistics. National figures are useful only in so far as policy descisions are made. For looking at you business look locally. My area has been fluctating 1% +/- for last 18 months. If prices rise too far there will be a rate rise to cool it, however this wont be required at present as restrictions in lending are doing the job. Increased supply does not increase prices but add more ceompetition allowing for prices to find their natural level.
HPCers can carry on but if you always hope for it to crash but dont buy at all then why waste your time talking about it! Doomsayers about in all professions so depends on which way you look at it - a seller talks very differntly about the house they buy than the one they are selling!
I agree with rantnrave FFS and BA make very valid points. I have spoken to some local colleagues in Surrey and we are all seeing more come on the market with no buyers to take them.
There are several agent near me who seem to be trying as hard as possible to commit commercial suicide by over pricing and under feeing - that's just crazy.
We now charge 50% more than the local average and ask for a £600+VAT non refundable up front fee.
Do you think I'm crazy?
I don't - it scares away the numpties and really commits the serious ones.
We have not lost one property that was worth losing by doing this.
If it doesn't sell then all I have lost is a bit of time that I would have been staring out of the window.
It will never make me a profit, but at least I am not paying for vendors' unrealistic expectations.
I thoroughly recommend it to you all.
Oh how I miss HIPs
I work in the south-west London area and I simply cannot take on enough houses to satisfy demand. Flats on the other hand are sticking largely because all the FTB’s who want them are incapable of getting a mortgage for the price that vendors want and, as a consequence, I am renting more than I am selling of that type of property. Most buyers buy a property with their heart rather than their head and they move for a variety of reasons, not just whether prices are rising or falling.
Does anybody on here remember the late 80’s and early 90’s? Prices in my area fell by around 20% but it was a gradual slide and, although the misery of negative equity was very real for some people, properties still got bought and sold. This fall was on the back of interest rates peaking at 15%. Sure, there were repossessions but that was without any type of buy to let cushion.
I have no problem if prices come down but I believe that the fall will be gradual and will not impair the functioning of the market. There is no point in saying that transactions will return to ‘normal levels’ as I don’t know how to define normal. It certainly wasn’t the heady days of 2006/7 when you put a house on the market and waited for a queue to form and it wasn’t the gloomy end of 2008 when you could hardly give a house away.
Can I also at this point just say a big thank you to the NAEA whose newsletter I have just received as it is headlined that the average UK property has lost 26k since July. It must be true as the data comes from that font of all knowledge, Zoopla. Well done, I am being shot in the foot by the organisation to whom I pay almost £700 in yearly fees. Peter Bolton King, you should be ashamed that all your organisation can do is rehash a Zoopla press release and give it credibility by repeating it in your newsletter.
@Mark Wadsworth
In my view yes but unless interest rates rise rapidly I think it'll be a long, slow correction in nominal prices.
While 0.8% monthly falls don't seem too severe, with inflation running at 5% we could easily see a 20% real terms fall over the next couple of years. Possibly much more.
I intend to keep my savings with NS&I for a while before buying that investment property.
F-FS and Berkshire Agent - those are two of the best and most realistic posts I have read on this site in a while!
Prices on land registry are fact, asking prices on rightmove are in a whole lot of cases fiction & dreams.
Not many buyers are selling to upsize due to earning lots of money, so with so many people selling & moving into rented it shows a lot of people are bailing out or being forced out due to the hard times we find ourselves in. The problem of this is that lots & lots more property is going to come on to the market in the coming months which will dilute the prices further and at a faster rate.
People who want to stay & remortgage are stuggling to find lenders who will lend to them as they dont have the equity in their homes to get a decent rate now coming out of fixed rates face higher standard vari rates which are unafordable. So many remortgages are being down valued as they want to release funds to pay for the outgoings or maxed out credit cards!! WHAT A MESS
I personally think the UK economy is on the brink of meltdown & property prices are related to the UK economy & if interest rates rise then its all going to come tumbling down around us, hence why i dont think we will see an interest rate raise till at least early/mid 2012, as the goverment & BOE try to fight off this BIG potential problem.
The banks have got big problems & bad debts tied to Ireland, Spain & Portugal which will have a knock on effect to the UK & the lending system in the UK.
Were all earning less money & while cost of fuel, food & general living goes up, ESTATE AGENTS need to be now charging more as less transactions will mean less income, meaning financial problems for all ahead of us in the coming months.
Big price reductions on current stock, & realisitc askign prices on all new instructions is the future with some passion, energy & motivated staff to see you thru it all.
2008 was a tough year, 2011 & 2012 are going to be even tougher.
My sense is that the penny is dropping with some people that the peak from at least 2005 on was artificial and that today's market prices on the whole are the equivalent of some time before then.
I've had three sellers this week make major cuts in asking prices, one of £100k (20%), another of £75k (around 18%), another of £45k (15%), these were all people who dropped by little nibbles the last year, a few £k at a time but have finally bitten the bullet and made the grand gesture.
I wouldn't call any of them desperate (there's no axeman waiting to take their property away), they are just people who want to get on with their lives. I think they are being quite savvy as I suspect the rest of the market is going this way by the end of the summer.
I've taken on a property from a rival vendor as well in the past fortnight, curiously the couple are coming to me because the other agent 'won't allow them to drop their price' at least not to the level they think is necessary. Pretty curious but that property is also on now at an almost 20% drop. I don't understand why an agent should fight to keep prices high, commercial suicide I'd have thought. Realistic prices drive quicker sales - there ARE buyers out there looking for a bargain and these properties will now sell quickly, interest has certainly been very high.
The other story on latent reposessions does chime with experience. In this game, only an idiot could have failed to see that lots of people got in over their heads, unwisely, in the boom years, with large salary multiple loans (many of them interest only - over 40% of loans in 2007, I read) based on nothing but optimism: the only plan some people had to pay these loans off was rising prices.
Now, with no sign of prices even being maintained let alone rising, earnings being eroded by inflation, and jobs being lost, they have little incentive beyond saving face to stay where they are. It would be suicide though for lenders to start pulling the rug so I see more of a dribble of these people rather than a flood (at the moment anyway - this could change if things take a big turn for the worse).
@PinHead
Sentiment appears to be changing. Prices can fall..........but only a little bit.
This is obviously a load of wishfull thinking. Thanks to a 15 year price bubble, the proportion of "homeowners" with no equity is still small (40% have no mortgage at all).
There is much room for some pent up crashing to be done. It doesn't matter anyway. If my house falls by 20% so does the one I want to move up to. Swings and roundabouts.
Is it safe to say that we're on the second leg down and the Dead Cat Bounce peaked in the middle of last year?
Ray - 'house prices can only fall so far'. Can they also only 'rise so far'? Experience in the years up to 2007 saw house prices rise far beyond all normal models of the housing market. Does that not suggest they could now also fall back to a greater extent than you are suggesting?
REAL SOLD prices dropping.
NO REALITY in asking prices STILL !!!
No spring bounce.
Oh well, time to stop been stupid
and mark down before you go out of businesss, or an EA
who markets at realistic prices and GETS SALES takes your
business away.
...........Only distressed vendors need to follow prices down. Anyone not needing to sell will not bother.............
One would think that these recent, relatively small, percentages are a reflection of the overall difficulties in obtaining mortgages during the last year or two?
House prices can only fall so far and we are approaching that level. Vendors will not sell at a greatly reduced price if they have a mortgage that cannot be discharged (probably, due to the downturn, if they purchased during the last 5/10 years on a 25 year mortgage cannot afford to).
Henry Prior Says: "Prices continued their slide in February, falling 0.8% on the month before, the sixth consecutive monthly fall in a row." - "the accepted definition of a recession "
Another article in MyIntroducer.com says: Prices of UK prime country houses rose in the first quarter of 2011 by 0.5%, partially reversing some of the prices falls in the second half of 2010, reveal Knight Frank. With prices of prime London property having risen by 30% since March 2009, buyers coming out of the capital are beginning to have an effect on the prices of the best country properties.
But as usual, the focus is on a national statistic. Bad news sells I suppose.
There is NO RECESSION in London. FACT.
Re the idea that: Dropping prices does not increase sales volume it reduces supply and increases demand.
I would totally agree with that statement were we talking about a normal market. But I think the housing market stopped being 'normal' once people got away with lying about their income on mortgage application forms.
The theory doesn't match recent data either. According to the NAEA there was a 25% rise in the number of properties for sale last month, compared to February 2010.
Supply is increasing, not decreasing at the moment. Some of that is no doubt due to seasonal factors, but there is a very significant amount of pent-up supply out there. Yep - pent-up supply - vendors who have been holding off while waiting for prices to rise above 2007 levels, accidental landlords etc.
Doubtless the 'HPC mob' overreact to much but those more optimistic/holding blind faith amongst you should remember one thing. They probably don't have an axe to grind, or else are a more realistic estate agent. Whereas those who pour cold water and scorn on any comment of anything other than the most minor 'adjustment' of course have a vested interest - selling a product likely to rise in price and ideally never fall is easy. If only shares were always like that.
I suggest you look at the next story and hidden arrears. Sadly Pinhead is right there will be a lot of possessions when the rate being paid by by borrowers is around 8% or above. Unless lenders manage to hold the properties and rent them on an LPA Receiver basis then prices are bound to fall and heavily.
House prices can never fall. Ever. People just won't sell. Fact. Because I said so...............or at least until interest rates rise. Then there'll be carnage.
Rantnrave
Don't spoil the fun
It is always amusing when the HPC mob jump on here and start banging on about the end of the world
There is no doubt that it is a fragile time, but they do make the most out of these stories
Rant look at your notes from the previous discussions.
Only distressed vendors need to follow prices down. Anyone not needing to sell will not bother.
Dropping prices does not increase sales volume it reduces supply and increases demand.
This story would surely have much more impact if it included, Mike Ockenden and Peter Hendry.
Do our worst? But this is welcome news - for EAs too who need lower prices to shift more volume.
Come on HPC mob do your worst - am looking forward to it