House Prices Fall Again In August
Like for like house prices fell by 5.3% in August, the largest fall to date, and there seems to be more bad news to follow. The report by Hometrack has confirmed the worst fears of the industry and even though there appears to be some patchy interest from buyers at current levels the situation is far from finished.
While the 0.9% month on month fall was not as large as previous months the year of year fall is the highest since the survey began back in 2001. It also turns out that the average property sale is now taking some 11 weeks to conclude against around 6 weeks just a year ago. Whether this is the impact of the HIPs of a general lack of interest in the market remains to be seen.
Homeowners have been looking for some good news over the last few months but this has been very very thin on the ground. Prices keep falling, there are still issues with finance and the government seems to be more interested about in-fighting than sorting out the short to medium term issues connected with the economy. Perhaps we might see some better news over the remainder of 2008?
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