Home sellers reduce expectations by 7.3%

Rightmove has reported that the average asking price of a house in England and Wales has fallen by 7.3% over the past year, to £213,570.

Average asking prices in January are 1.9% down on December, with the biggest drop recorded in the West Midlands, at 6%.

The East Midlands recorded the only increase in average asking prices, which put on 0.4% this month.

In London vendors dropped their expectations by 1.3% in January, although home sellers in some of the capital’s most expensive boroughs are marketing properties at between 5.6% and 13.6% more than last year, according to Rightmove.

The property website is predicting that the decline will continue into the second half of 2009 with a further 8% shaved off asking prices before the market bottoms out.

The firm’s commercial director, Miles Shipside, explains that a lack of property coming onto the market is helping to arrest price falls.

He adds that the collapse in the supply of new homes from developers and a shift of unsold stock to the lettings market has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the over-supply that had been present since early 2008.

In January, Rightmove recorded 43,416 new listings, compared with 89,110 at the same time last year.

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