The chance of your home selling this year has fallen with less than 40% of sellers likely to find a buyer.
Sellers seem to completely have mis-read the housing market and increased asking prices at a time when sale prices are falling. Property web site Rightmove.co.uk which advertises about 90% of homes for sale say the average asking price quoted by estate agents of new homes added to the site in January rose by 3.1%.
Interestingly the average asking price of new homes coming onto the market in the ‘banker borough’ of Kensington & Chelsea rose 3% last month leaving them 3.3% below their New Year level in 2010.This is unusual since we have come to expect London to outperform the rest of the country in a classic ‘two-tier’ market. Asking prices rose 3.1% across England & Wales last month leaving vendor expectations almost exactly where they were at the start of last year.
Worryingly Rightmove saw 121,635 new homes come to the market, a 35% jump on last year. Volumes of sales have not risen by a similar amount leaving an over-hang of property for sale which will put downward pressure on sale prices. Rightmove’s latest report published today recorded a rise in asking prices last month of 3.1% to £230,030 suggesting the sellers have completely mis-read the market. Average sale prices recorded by the Land Registry published last month marked prices £68,846 lower at £163,184.
1.3m homes came onto the market in 2010 on top of the 730,000 that were already being advertised at the start of the previous year. HMRC recorded just 884,000 sales with 560,000 mortgages. Just 43% of sellers found a buyer last year and it looks like 2011 will be even tougher. We started the year with nearly 1 million homes on the market and with even more piling on the chances of your home selling this year looks like it will fall below 40%.