| By :
Jackie De Burca
Like a nation of eagle-eyed individuals, many of us Brits are watching the UK property market like hawks. While keeping an eye on the God of the search engines, Google, for fresh news and new perspectives, today I noticed two conflicting outlooks. One comes from Assetz, the UK and International Property Investment Specialists and the other from This Is Money, the financial website of the year. Assetz is sitting on the positive side of the fence suggesting that the UK's property market is in fact "firming up" even in the current economic uncertainty. The chief executive officer of Assetz, one Mr. Stuart Law, said that although property buying has slowed down recently, a change in fortunes was imminent. Having also read the article in This Is Money, which quotes Rightmove as a source, one may like to say to Mr. Law that although we would love to believe him, the logic of the other article which sits over on the negative side of the fence is more difficult to dispute. This article highlights that hoards of homeowners are deciding to sell their homes which in turn will trigger a sharp house price fall. As this article states-asking prices have fallen for the first time this year and it is predicted that the average England and Wales asking price of £236,300 will have fallen by £14,000 by December 2010. Now as currently there is an average of 11,000 mortgages being approved each week and over 30,000 properties are coming onto the market each week, it doesn't take a mathematic genius to work out where that will take us. The 30,000 new properties entering the market on a weekly basis is 50% higher of the amount of July 2009. On the other hand, Mr. Law focuses on research from the Council of Mortgage Lenders which apparently reveals that the gross mortgage lending increased by 15% in June. The Council of Mortgage Lenders say that there are signs of house prices stabilizing and more properties coming onto the market which they credit to the abolition of HIPs (Home Information Packs). Yet they do add that the actual level of transactions are low and will be likely to remain so due to credit being somewhat restrained. In January 2010 the average number of monthly unsold properties per estate agent was 3; however this number has now risen to a shocking 77. Mr. Law in his commentary said that "we don't think the evidence suggests that there is a permanent slowdown now in the UK housing market. The evidence seems to suggest there was a wobble." Miles Shipside, the Commercial Director of Rightmove said: "Buyers have got the upper hand." In the meantime if you happen to be either a seller or a buyer you could do worse than checking out the concept of private house sales and using one of the sites which will lets you list your property for free with no hidden costs or see what properties are on offer.
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