Homes sell at 10% below asking prices

Hometrack has reported that home sellers are accepting offers almost 10% below asking prices, to secure a sale.

According to the housing intelligence firm, sellers achieved an average 90.7% of their asking prices in August, down from 90.9% in July.

The figure is at its lowest since Hometrack began recording the proportion of asking price achieved, in 2001, and the firm points out that some properties sold in August would have already been downwardly repriced before a buyer was found.

The sale to asking price ratio has now dropped for the 11th consecutive month giving an annual average of 5.3% in the 12 months to the end of August, compared with 4.4% a year earlier.

The August month-on-month decline of 0.9% was slightly below that of July and June and the number of viewings needed to secure a sale also fell slightly.

However, the average length of time a home remained on the market stood at over 11 weeks, or almost twice as long as in August 2007.

Hometrack put the average price of a UK home at £167,000 in August, down 0.9% on July.

Prices fell in almost 60% of postcodes in England and Wales, with the sharpest falls recorded in East Anglia, London and the South West.

The figures compares with a 1.9% decline in August reported by Nationwide last week, taking the average price of a home to £164,654, or £19,000 less than in August 2007.

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