Monday, Apr 20, 2009
Rightmove: +1.8% MoM, -7.3% YoY
Telegraph: Sellers raise prices by almost £4,000 in April
Home sellers raised their asking prices by almost £4,000 on average in April compared to the previous month, according to Rightmove. The 1.8% rise brings the average asking price to £222,077, in the latest sign that confidence may be returning to the housing market. This was the third month in a row that asking prices have risen.
"It looks like we are now bumping along the bottom of the trough," said Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove
Posted by little professor @ 01:10 AM (2261 views) Add Comment
25 Comments
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1. quiet guy said...
Fascinating. I'm having a little difficulty believing that all is well with our economy (my prerequisite for a house price revival) but time will tell. The crash will not go on forever but this recovery looks a bit too soon for me.
2. gone-to-colombia said...
The triumph of hope over reality.
Never underestimate the power of self delusion.
The bubble burst with over a year ago, since then the real problems have started. There is no chance of a recovery in the housing market, not for several years.
This crash has a long, long way to go.
3. brickormortis said...
Wow, this is the funniest thing ever. "It looks like we are now bumping along the bottom of the trough," said Miles Shipside, COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR OF RIGHTMOVE!!! Ha Ha! I am sorry but why do newspapers bother to take any notice of rightmove. For years they have inflated the bubble with their "asking prices" which were interpreted as current market prices or true worth. It doesn't matter what you want for your house it is what you sell it for that counts. Sometimes I really wish the UK were personified before me and then I would kick it in the b@lls! What has gone wrong with our green and pleasant land? What, oh Lord, has gone wrong! :@(
4. mr messy said...
This article should have been printed 20 days ago on april fools day, can anyone really believe this ??? and what are rightmove trying to achieve here after all it is the final sale price that counts
5. p. doff said...
Agents in this area are reporting increased activity, and I've certainly noticed a lot of 'sold' boards popping up on properties that have been on the market for ages. Perhaps it will be shortlived but sentiment does seem to be changing.
6. Mick said...
It's getting to the stage where i don't know which way this is going and i've waited so long for this crash since housing started rising when labour won election in 1997 .theres one person i know who could be happy with this news and that is green bay can bloggers remember him
7. Mariothegreat said...
They can raise whatever they want but they have to find a buyer willing to pay it...
8. pelethar said...
There's no point crying about it, the Rightmove index is - and always has been - measured purely on initial asking price. Of course it doesn't mean sale prices are on the up; but it says something about vendors' attitudes and expectations. And what it says doesn't bode well for a continuing HPC.
9. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
It is very early days. Not forgetting we have the lowest rates in history at the moment.
Nobody should expect prices to go down continuously. They are quite likely to bounce around as they head down over time.
Affordability is not there so there is only one way to go.
10. Ainsworld said...
Rightmove data - not seasonally adjusted, which is a big problem with this series. By my calculations their figures always show a rise (beyond the prevailing trend in the data) of 3.5% from January to April, based on the previous 6 years. So far this year they've gone up by 3.9% since January, so they're basically consistent with the market being flat.
11. stillthinking said...
The banks haven't confessed their losses. Unemployment hasn't peaked and won't for another year (if things go well). Repossessions haven't peaked. There has been no credible commitment by government to low interest rates in the future. Population debt is huge. There are a wave of buyers at the peak about to have to remortgage. FTBs have no chance. We haven't moved into outright deflation yet.
etc etc So not an early recovery. We still haven't had capitulation. Capitulation is a pretty big event, an emergence of a mass of sellers swamping available buyers, and competing to offload property.
12. rm96696 said...
Do non seasonally adjusted asking prifces mean much? I don't think so.
13. timmy t said...
"It looks like we are now bumping along the bottom of the trough" - I reckon we went over the cliff but landed on a ledge. We'll fall off the ledge late summer and find the bottom 12 months later, way way way down.
14. uncle tom said...
This may be nothing more than a modest surge of older people in oversized properties finally realising that the crash is not a minor blip, and that they need to downsize sooner rather than later.
Compare the average asking price (£222k) with the most recent average sale price recorded by the Land Registry (£154k) - a clear indicator that the top end of the market is totally overloaded.
15. timmy t said...
UT - I've been saying the same for a while. Absence of FTB's means a higher proportion of activity is further up the ladder. Simple.
16. Neil B said...
I don't take any notice of Rightmove's stats - they are based on asking prices not selling prices. They are obviously always going to deny a further collapse in the housing market as its in their best interests to do so
17. peter_2008 said...
It is good news for HPC. The little liquidity our great leader begged, stole, borrowed and printed would be completely offset by a bull trap bounce.
Recovery of house price and the related industries needs VOLUME. With such limited liquidity in the market, a “too early” bounce in price will actually kill off liquidity flow - the basic mechanism of most bull traps.
This is a classic case of individuals pursuing their own best interest can cause disasters as a group.
18. hash browne said...
I'm surprised nobody's picked up on the 13% increase in new sellers, in a single month!!! That should push those prices straight back down!
19. sold out said...
i saw this being reported on sky news this morning as "house prices rising again". no mention that it was actually asking prices and the delusional aspirations of desperate sellers.
20. doomwatch said...
Miles Shipside, you are not bouncing along the bottom, you are
TOUCHING THE VOID.
21. 51ck-6-51x said...
The top end of the property market does tend to start it's fall later.
I believe Uncle Tom & Timmy T have a very valid point @14/15.
An asking price index is, although not a direct indication of market price, a useful measure*, an offer price index would be nice to have too! (*wishes*)
* As are sales volumes, new instruction volumes, time to sale, percentage withdrawn, etc, etc..
22. wiltshire said...
Mick @ 6, Rightmove figures should be taken with a massive pinch of salt. They have to look at the upside of even the most desperate of results. 'Bumping along the bottom' is just another way of saying 'buy now before prices take off again, you don't want to miss out on the upturn etc etc'. Same old VI rubbish. The fundamentals all point to one thing, sadly, but that's what Labour have done for us.
Yeah, I remember Greenbay and his predecessor David 90210. Both utterly full of themselves and very much in the Kirstie Allsopp 'house prices won't ever go down' camp. I'd love to know what their situation REALLY was and what it really is now. Greenbay seemed to think he was very well insulated against the current problems. Mind you, many people thought they were fireproof........
23. letsgetreadytotumble said...
I've been monitoring Cornwall since November using PropertyBee.
Apart from the occasional increase, the vast majority of price changes have shown a decrease. Consistently since November.
The increases must be in other parts of the country (or pure fiction).
24. Greenshootsandleaves said...
This is precisely the sort of article I had in mind when I suggested (admittedly in a quiet corner of HPC Forum) a league table for the journalists and publications that engage - wittingly or otherwise - in serial ramping and secondary ramping. Instead of just going 'tut tut tut' and perhaps pointing out the absurdity of some or all of the arguments invoked by these estate agents' friends, why not also paste the article into a specially created section within HPC and award it some points leading to the Ramp-Art Trophy [just a working title - feel free to improve on it]? Do you think the league leaders and, at a later stage, the winning journalist /publication will welcome the recognition (e.g. '... writes VI, the current HPC Ramp-Art Trophy League Leader')?
25. Greenshootsand Leaves said...
For:
'Home sellers raised their asking prices by almost £4,000 on average in April'
[BTW, aren't we supposed to wait until the end of April for the April statistics?],
read:
'Average asking price up by almost £4,000 in April as increasing numbers of luxury properties are put up for sale'.
Other than that it can only be a mistaken attempt to parody Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather: 'Ah! if you donna wanna buy my house at £300,000 I'm gonna ask for £320,000'. Mistaken, because, in the book, the bargaining ends not with the would-be vendor upping his price but with the Don (the prospective buyer) suddenly offering LESS and in effect, issuing a deadly warning!