Unsold home prices 'fall further'

Disused "For Sale" signs in a yard in Hull

Asking prices continue to be cut on unsold homes, with the average price down by £22,061 in the past week on properties where reductions were made.

This meant 3,293 unsold homes had an average 7% fall in their "for sale" price, said property website Globrix.

Southend saw the sharpest level of price cutting, with 2.9% of sellers reducing their asking prices last week.

Earlier this week the Halifax reported that selling prices were now down 14.9% over the past year.

'Penny has dropped'

"As the weeks go by, more and more sellers are re-pricing their properties downwards on the basis that if they don't then they simply won't find a buyer," said Daniel Lee of Globrix.

"There is no doubt that sellers are becoming a lot more realistic around price - the penny really has dropped."

Other figures from the internet search engine suggest that the property market is heading for further stagnation.

Despite the recent cuts in interest rates, Globrix found that at the end of November, 23% of UK properties for sale had been on the market for six months.

But just a month earlier 30% of homes for sale had been on the market for that length of time.

With sales currently both very low, and flat, it suggests that more people are taking their homes off the market because they cannot be sold while mortgages are rationed by banks and building societies.