Sales talk: are house sales really on the up?
• Bill Preston, owner of Prestons estate agents in Porthcawl, south Wales, said: “Everything’s still exactly the same as last year. House prices haven’t increased and they are still dropping. The only properties selling on the market are at a bargain price.” Since Christmas more people were trying to sell their homes, he said, but that didn’t mean anything because buyers were holding off.
• Peter Rollings, managing director of estate agent Marsh & Parsons in south-west London, said: “Now I’m seeing a lot more activity. It’s the busiest we’ve been for 15 months but it’s not turning into transactions yet. Prices aren’t going up. I think they’ve already gone down 25% in London and maybe more in other parts of the country. In my view they’re going to fall another 5%.
“It’s not going to be a V-shaped bounce but it’s going to be a gentle U-shaped bounce, which is much more healthy for the market.”
• Liz Carlisle, an estate agent at JR Hooper & Co in the Yorkshire dales, said it has been “absolutely crazy” this week. “We’ve done five sales today,” she said. “People have decided that we’ve reached a bottom and they’re going to buy, buy, buy. A pick up in viewings started about two weeks ago and transactions have started in the last couple of days.”
• Gary Street at Pearson Ferrier estate agents in Bury, Lancashire, said house prices in the area had dropped about 10% over the past six to eight months. But viewing requests doubled in the last two of weeks of December, he said, and offers had become more reasonable. “I think we have hit the bottom. That’s why buy-to-let investors and first time buyers are fighting to grab the bargains.”
• Ed Mead, director of Douglas & Gordon in west London, said: “The market has reached an interesting tipping point where … vendors are beginning to lower their expectations and are more realistic in converging with the buyer on pricing. However the difficulty in getting finance is the major sticking point to completing these deals.” But he saw an increase in demand which he said was providing an impetus to the market.
“The significant increase in demand and desperate lack of supply means buyers are competing for the best properties and, in some cases, offering higher prices,” he said.
“We sold two properties in December which didn’t go through because of financing. Now the same properties have been sold at a higher price.”
• David Marsh from Marshall’s estate agents in Penzance, Cornwall, said he did not believe the Halifax house price index. “Nothing like that is happening around here,” he said.
“If people don’t reduce their prices then they’ve got no hope of selling.”
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