Following a year or more of low stock levels due to buoyant sales and a lack of sellers coming to market, London buyers are now seeing more choice. The number of new sellers is now 97% higher than a year ago, leading to some downward pressure on asking prices this month.
Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove comments:
“This flush of new competition has forced fresh sellers to tone down their asking price demands. Spring is the traditional time of year for more sellers to come to market, and they were seemingly undeterred by the impending election.”
In May last year average asking prices rose by 2.7%. So with a monthly fall of 0.4% there are signs that this year’s sellers are now reducing their traditional bullish spring price expectations. What they have not done is stay off the market, or be put off by the political uncertainty.
Miles Shipside observes:
“The election was held in the middle of the spring selling season, but there is little sign that it deterred people from selling their houses. New sellers have already been holding back on coming to market for nearly two years and, as kids do not stop growing in a recession, some family houses must be bursting at the seams.
"While sellers don’t appear to be put off, the rising levels of unsold stock indicate that buyers are not as willing or able to act upon their pent-up moving desires.”
Rightmove’s quarterly Consumer Confidence Survey polled potential movers in London at the start of the year, asking whether the election would affect their moving plans. A resounding 67% said it would not, and this surge of new sellers so close to the election bears that out.
Miles Shipside comments:
“We observed last month that rising prices and more properties coming to market would be unhappy bedfellows in the long-term. This month we are seeing signs that the relationship is under increasing stress.
"Sellers are starting to reduce their pricing expectations to court the fewer buyers who are able to proceed, though the number of buyers who can purchase is too low to bring volume back to the housing market. The ugly ducklings in the housing beauty parade will be left on the shelf."
