Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
There may be a slight glimmer of hope on the housing market horizon, according to the RCIS.
UK house prices fell by 0.9% on average last month, according to the latest survey from the Nationwide Building Society, the UK’s largest.
However, the decline was less severe than the record 2.5% fall in May, leading Jeremy Leaf of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, to be more optimistic than others. “There is a little bit of a glimmer that it is not getting as bad, as quickly, as three months ago,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. Leaf also said that the desire to move is still there with all the same reasons existing for people wanting to move home, but that lenders are still uneasy about giving mortgages.
The average home now costs £172,415 and is £13,629 cheaper than at the top of the market in October last year.
Regionally, the best places to be are Oxford, Canterbury and Cambridge, where prices actually rose by 4% in the three months to June, whilst those in Sheffield, Belfast and Birmingham saw 17%, 11% and 9%, respectively, wiped off their house prices.
