Reluctant house sellers keep summer prices high

Sellers were likely to have been deterred by a lack of available homes to buy, the cost of moving and a dearth of affordable housing.

Miles Shipside, of Rightmove, said: ‘The underlying shortage of property coming to market compared to buyer demand has helped to deliver the strongest August price performance since before the credit crunch.

Prices fell just 0.8% month-on-month, equivalent to a drop of £2,258, compared to an average drop of 1.5% over the past eight years, according to new figures from Rightmove published today. Most of their competition are on holiday and sellers with houses on the market in August are usually the ones most desperate to shift their properties.

This is the least generous August price discount from sellers since 2007 and is largely down to an 8% year-on-year drop in the number of new sellers, which has supported prices.

House sellers’ asking prices are edging down only slightly this month, ending a seven-year trend of buyers snapping up properties relatively cheaply over the summer. Asking prices are now 6.4% higher than they were a year ago.

“If there’s very little up for sale it can often put off would-be sellers from deciding to market their own property”.

New sellers entering the market during the past month are asking an average of 0.8% less for their homes than those who put homes up for sale in July. MAB said on a typical £151,668mortgage taken on a two-year fixed rate of 1.87%, borrowers arranging the loan over 25 years would face monthly repayments of £634. Director Mark Manning added: “It’s not that there’s no stock, it’s just that when good property does come on the demand is so high that it’s selling much more quickly than usual”.

Prices were flat in Yorkshire and the Humber.

‘Quite a few sellers in Chiswick are looking to trade up and move out of London, and when they’re not able to find a suitable property this is having a knock-on effect on the flats they’re selling, increasing the demand for the smaller properties further’.