House Prices Continue to Fall
Jul 8th, 2008 | By admin | Category: property newsHouse prices in the UK are continuing to fall with 9 consecutive months of price drops and an annual fall of 8.1%.
According to a survey by Nationwide the average home is worth £169,000, which almost £15,000 cheaper than at the same time last year according to reports in the news today. Although the UK property market has seen some considerable drops over the last few month’s house prices are still £11,000 higher than 3 years ago.
So what do these figures mean for the homeowner who has recently bought in the last couple of years? Well if they have only put down a 5 or 10% deposit they have probably lost any equity they have built up, which means they are back to square one.
According to Mark Shipside at Rightmove, sellers are starting to realize that they have to be more aggressive in their strategy and not wait to test the water, they have jump in and drop prices in order to gain an advantage over other house sellers. He went on to imply that the thinking behind this is to sell now rather than wait for the market to deteriorate further.
This I think is a reasonable strategy given the current state of the economy and the weakening housing market, while suggests that this situation is not likely to improve any time soon.
The worst hit companies are the estate agents and builders who are being hit hard with many of them laying off employees and many of them expecting the situation to worsen.
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