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It’s a tough time for home buyers – and for sellers too.
Buyers are still suffering from high mortgage rates that average at more than 5 per cent for both a two-year and a five-year fix. That’s up half a percentage point from a year ago.
Sellers are facing soft demand, with prices falling slowly. Halifax reports that they were down 0.1 per cent last month and down 0.2 per cent this quarter. Nationwide calculated that they were down 0.6 per cent in May, though that was after a rise of 0.4 per cent in April.
While estate agents blame the war in the Middle East for the housing market’s current uncertainty, there are no early signs of things picking up. Indeed, Savills now predicts that prices overall will fall by 2 per cent this year, with the sharpest declines in the least affordable markets.
