News

Rightmove have said that asking prices for properties new on the market had shot up 3% – the highest ever rise in June equating to £8,460 – to £294,351. (UK wide), but new sellers are staying away, starving the market of stock, the post-election rise failing to materialize.
Supply of properties coming to the market is down 8.5% compared with a year ago and down 3.9% on a monthly basis. It means that fewer properties have come on to the market after the election than before it. The election result in Scotland causing more uncertainty than before.
By contrast, buyer demand looks to be high, with Rightmove reporting the busiest ever May on its website, with 115m visits, equal to every adult in the UK visiting twice in the month.
The busiest-ever single day for visits to Rightmove was on Tuesday, May 19.According to Rightmove, asking prices for properties likely to be bought by first-time buyers or buy to let investors, have gone up the most in the last year.  Probably due to the lower end of stamp duty being lifted to £145,000, this has allowed the price of property at that end to rise and be of little help to the first time buyer’s sector, first-time buyer asking prices are £175,628, up 6.2% from a year ago; second-stepper asking prices are £242,380, up 4.2%; and top of the ladder asking prices are £543,065, up 2.9%. This has pushed up some of the asking prices of those properties that have been marketed, meaning that buyers are faced with paying a new average record price for the more limited choice available. It could be said that this is the price of political certainty.
Greece is playing the waiting game as anticipated, two days from now it will almost certainly be denied the 7.2bn Euros from Brussels which means it will have to default with the IMF. Markets Worldwide are fearful of this happening, which is why Greece are playing the waiting game! They either get what they want, or there is no point in repaying the IMF or Brussels (from a Greek perspective). I have said before Greece is no bigger than BP, so you would wonder what all the fuss is about. However the Euro is a political project (not economic necessity) so the politicians can’t let it fail. The real repercussions if Greece opts out is Spain and Italy may decide that is an easy option too. That would have a worldwide effect if Europe was seen to be collapsing. So the stakes are high, the markets are nervous, and nothing is happening anywhere. Jobs are at risk and businesses have stopped investing. Not a good back drop for the housing market.        
The irony of it all is, Greece is already bust. That's why it needs aid packages in the first place. It's just that for more than half a decade policymakers in Brussels have played a game of pretending Greece isn't bust.
At home, May saw a significant rise in transport costs, food and motor fuel prices, pushing the figure up.
However, core inflation was only 0.9 per cent, after hitting a low of 0.8 per cent in April, which gives some cause for concern.
I doubt that deflation will recur in the UK, although it cannot be completely ruled out if oil prices take a renewed appreciable downward lurch. It’s more likely that consumer price inflation will hover just above zero through the summer and then start heading decisively up from the autumn.
Should be good news for the purchaser, low inflation, low interest rates and yet properties are not coming to the market.
Bill Reid BEM BA NAEA Dip PFS
Reid Estates
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