Source : The Business Times, November 18, 2008
(LONDON) Increasingly desperate sellers slashed asking prices for homes in England and Wales by 2.9 per cent in November, pushing them 7.1 per cent below their level a year ago, a survey showed yesterday.
Property website Rightmove said sellers were recognising the need for more drastic action as the traditional season for moving home drew to a close.
Still, the annual fall in property asking prices remains around half the drop in selling prices recorded by Britain's biggest mortgage lenders.
'Some sellers could avoid months of disillusionment and despair if they started marketing at an asking price a lot closer to where evidence indicates they are likely to end up,' said Miles Shipside, Rightmove's commercial director.
Many banks have clamped down on lending over the past year, squeezing the life out of the property market.
All regions in England and Wales registered year-on-year falls in asking prices. Wales saw the steepest fall of 11.2 per cent. The number of new sellers dwindled to just 20,000 a week, almost half the number this time last year.
However, the bulk of the survey was conducted before the Bank of England's 1.5 percentage point interest rate cut on Nov 6 which took official rates to 3.0 per cent, their lowest in more than 50 years.
'The lowest base rate since 1955 and the promise of further aggressive cuts gives the potential for a greater volume of sales in 2009,' Rightmove added. -- Reuters
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