House prices dropping, says RICS

House prices dropping, says RICS

The July 2012 RICS UK Housing Market Survey showed that 24% more solicitors believed prices were falling rather than rising.

Falling prices were one of four key market trends the report identified.

As well as a reduction in prices, transactions slipped for the fourth consecutive month.

London bucked national trends as the only region where prices rose.

Whilst across the Midlands and Yorkshire surveyors were most likely to report house prices falling.

RICS said it had found marked regional differences however, with the North and North West regions did see demand from buyers generally rise over the last four month.

Sales per surveyor were recorded over a three month period, the figure of 15.1 being the lowest since last October.

RICS pointed to the difficulties many had in getting a mortgage being a likely contributory factor.

Peter Bolton King, RICS global residential director, said: "Despite the terrible weather seen in many parts of the county last month, a steady number of potential buyers still got out there to test the market.

"However, this didn’t result in a higher level of actual transactions. Fewer sellers are putting their homes up for sale and the ongoing problem of accessing affordable finance is not helping."

"If vendors want to sell their homes quickly, they will have to be realistic in their price expectations."

It will be interesting to see what the ambitions of players like Tesco and the Co-operative mean for these figures going forward.

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