Once again the latest sales so far recorded have been published courtesy of the Land Registry and as expected they make depressing reading. At present the total number of recorded sales look to be down over 55% on August last year.
In August 2006, a relatively typical year, over 122,000 sales completed.
Last year there were less than 110,000.
So far just 17,871 August completions have been registered by solicitors this year.
Some bright spots however were Brighton where in the three postcodes of BN1, 2 and 3 a total of 123 sales completed. There are just under 4,000 properties currently for sale in and around Brighton with around 500 added to the market in the last two weeks.
For those agents who were not on the beach, areas where they will at least have had something to do include south west London where in Battersea there were 30 sales and in Wimbledon where there were 31.
Early anaylsis of the number of completions reported in July for the month of June confirmed that only 17,681 sales completed. By the time that most solicitors had got around to reporting their transactions three months later this total had grown to 54,000.
The figures for August appear to be following a similar trend to earlier months. With new mortgage approvals down 95% in August and sales volumes looking like they will be down by over 55% we are clearly going to see even worse in the next few months despite the impact of the changes to Stamp duty made in September. While we await the fall out from Lehmans, AIG, HBoS, Bradford & Bingley and the delayed bailout of the banks in the US, September and October figures are going to make uncomfortable reading for those involved in the property market.
A list of the top 23 post codes by volume are included below for your information.
BN3 46 Hove
BN2 43 Brighton
PR2 38 Preston
ST4 38 Stoke-on-Trent
ST3 37 Stoke-on-Trent
BN1 34 Brighton
CR0 34 Croydon
ST6 34 Stoke-on-Trent
CV6 33 Coventry
DT4 32 Weymouth
PE19 32 St. Neots
SL6 32 Maidenhead
ST5 32 Newcastle-under-Lyme
NN4 31 Northampton
SW19 31 Wimbledon
GU14 30 Farnborough
LN6 30 Lincoln
SW11 30 Battersea
BA2 29 Bath
DE55 29 Alfreton
DE7 29 Ilkeston
EX4 29 Exeter
NG9 29 Nottingham