According to Home's figures, price falls across most English regions have dragged the average for England and Wales down a further 0.3%, and both mean and median marketing times are longer than a year ago. The scale and scope of the downturn are both increasing, in line with our expectations. Consequently, price growth is trending to zero while stock levels are moving up.
The same pattern of supply-induced slowdown combined with a pullback in demand which led to market saturation in London, the South East and the East of England now looks set to envelop the East and West Midlands. Supply is up by 11% compared to a year ago in both these regional markets and this is making for more conservative asking prices.
Further ahead in the property cycle, the East of England continues to suffer increasing supply. Currently up 15% year-on-year, this over-abundance of property on the market has driven annualised price growth down to just 0.5% and raised the Typical Time on Market by ten days.
London and the South East again suffered some of the largest price falls over the last month - both -0.5% and second only to the South West (-0.7%) - and this further confirms how prices in these regions are stuck in reverse gear. Asking prices in London have been steadily declining for 2.5 years and, thus far, there is no indication of or cause for a change from this slow price erosion.
Counter to the doom and gloom engulfing the South and East, the northern and western regional property markets are outperforming the rest of the country by a significant margin in terms of price growth, as is Wales, which is leading the price growth tables ahead of the West Midlands and the North West. However, the end of the boom is within sight for the West Midlands as rising supply starts to overtake demand.
Overall, supply of property for sale in the UK is up by 7% year-on-year and the total stock for sale has increased by 8.8%.
In September 2017, the annualised rate of increase of home prices was 3.5%; today the same measure is just 0.9% and is trending down.
