House prices remain flat in November, says Hometrack |
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Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:05
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LONDON: House prices remained unchanged in England and Wales in November, indicating a fall of 2.5 per cent on the year, according to researcher Hometrack. This is for the first time in 16 months that the prices have not shown a fall, said Hometrack, whose measure of average house prices is based on agreed sales and not the asking price.
The average price for the month was 160,700 pounds in comparison with its peak average price of 167,700 pounds recorded last summer.
Hometrack's Richard Donnel said there has been a pent-up demand helping the market as result of more realistic pricing of property over the last year and the cut in the interest rates in August. This has pushed up sales but had only limited impact on average prices. The prices are likely to remain unchanged over the next few months, he added.
Hometrack's study also brought out the fact that the average time taken to conclude a sale had gone up to 8 weeks from 7.1 weeks a year ago. The number of properties for sale came down in November, the first time in more than a year, but there has also been a fall in the number of prospective buyers.
The Hometrack study showed that average house prices had remained unchanged in 84 per cent of the 2,200 postcode districts covered, while the prices had moved in just 4 per cent. Price increases have been mostly in parts of inner London.
Hometrack described the situation as a buyers' market as vendors have been receiving on average around 93 pct of the asking price for their property over the last 12 months. This had slightly risen to 93.4 pct in October and remained unchanged over November.
Donnell said the inner London market is starting to recover and that is going to continue over the next year.
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Property prices continue to fall, but sales are up 