The latest property market survey from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors confirms other recent reports that there is a big interest from putative buyers but that a shortage of mortgages is still acting as a serious brake on sales.
The RICS said interest from potential buyers increased in January for the third consecutive month. But sales of residential properties fell to 9.9 per cent per agent in the three months to the end of January. In real terms it works out at a sales figure of around three properties per estate agent – which represents a record low for sales.
The blame for the poor sales is because of the continuing mortgage drought. There are property bargains in the market but the difficulties of acquiring a mortgage, with lenders demanding that a range of stringent conditions be met, has put a damper on proceedings.
Many mortgage offers have been withdrawn from the market and lenders who are still active are generally demanding hefty deposits.. The survey indicates that the number of unsold properties for each agent fell from 77.9 to 75.4 in January.
This is thought to be because would-be property sellers are putting off selling as a long as possible – in the hope that the property the market might improve – or because they are withdrawing properties for sale and trying to let them.
Resuscitating the property lending market has become an urgent priority for the government. But so far its endeavours appear to have had insufficient positive effect. The government has been damnatory about failed banks paying massive bonuses out of taxpayers money and it has urged institutions such as the nationalised Northern Rock to give priority to lending rather than extracting money from the market. But across the lending sector its exhortations appear in general to have fallen on deaf ears.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment