Rightmove.co.uk - the UK’s number one property website – has reported that new property listings are at the lowest levels in over a decade.
According to Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, estate agents are currently listing on average only one new property per branch per week – the lowest amount the website has ever recorded.
Since the turn of the year, only 34,433 new instructions have come onto the market – only have that of pre credit-crunch levels. This is in addition to the overall number of unsold stock that estate agents currently have on their books – 66 properties on average – the lowest amount in nearly 2 years.
“The market is stuck in a low transaction volume pit that will be hard to escape from without the mortgage funding to satisfy what appears to be strong pent-up demand.”
“It emphasises the fact that were a larger number of mortgages available to the market the interest, confidence and necessity to buy would lift the current muted sales transaction numbers from the virtual subsistence level of the last three years.” Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove.co.uk
Estate agents have reported to Rightmove a number of reasons for the low volume of new instructions:
- shortage of confidence in the UK economy
- lack of choice for property to buy
- restrictive mortgage lending
As part of the report, Rightmove also forecasted that the UK property market will remain “challenging and fragmented” for the remainder of 2012.