Home sellers in the UK slashed asking prices for a third month in January, according to Rightmove plc, which noted that “the market will remain challenging and fragmented during 2012.”
Britain’s biggest property website operator said the average asking prices in England and Wales dropped 0.8 percent from December to £224,060 (S$442,789), while values in London rose 0.8 percent.
Property prices in the country will likely remain in the hot seat, as high unemployment levels and the Eurozone debt crisis threatens to drive the economy back into a recession. Home loan approvals have changed little in November, while banks are expected to tighten lending terms in Q1 due to difficulties encountered in funding markets, said the Bank of England.
“The market will remain challenging and fragmented during 2012,” said Rightmove.
It noted that buyers’ interest is growing, with the number of property hunters rising to a record high in the first 10 days of this year, even as demand is being constrained by a “mortgage famine”.
The number of property searches on Rightmove’s website surged 27 percent from a year earlier to over 44 million, the highest since its start in 2000.
The company added that the 36,433 homes released for sale from 11 December to 7 January show an average of less than one new listing per real estate agent outlet per week. That is around half the pace witnessed before the credit crunch and the slowest rate since Rightmove started keeping records 10 years ago.
In London, the number of new property listings dropped to its lowest level in three years in the first week of January, an “early indication that a shortage of sellers and upwards price pressure will again feature in 2012.”
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