Sales in Wales plummet 10%

Sales in Wales plummeted 10% in September, the sharpest fall in the UK according to Hometrack's latest House Price Index.

Wales also suffered with the lowest average number of viewings per sale (10), with properties taking longer to sell (13 weeks) than in any other region.

But Wales saw the highest sales price as a percentage of asking price at 91%, though only slightly above the national average of 90%.

Melfyn Williams, managing director of Llangefni-based agency Williams & Goodwin, says: “It’s gone back to how it was in the mid-1980s and 1990s. I remember people putting their house on the market asking if it would sell in the next 12 months. That was the expectation, just as it is now.”

Properties in Greater London had the highest number of viewings - an average of 17.2 weeks - and sold quicker too, in an average of 9.3 weeks. This compares with an average of 11.5 weeks across the rest of the UK last month and the 11.3 weeks seen in August.

Meanwhile, new property listings declined across most of the country, making it the second consecutive month of falling volumes.

East Anglia experienced the greatest fall with 3.6%; Yorkshire and Humberside was the only region in which listings increased, up 1%.

Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, says: “While the demand side of the equation remains weak, it also seems that the general malaise is starting to impact on vendors with a further fall in the number of homes for sale as people withdraw their homes from the market in the face of greater uncertainty.

“With declining levels of activity on both the demand and supply side of the market, 2008 looks like being a year when the housing market ground to a near standstill.”

Hometrack’s research also shows that average property prices fell by 1% nationally. The smallest decrease of 0.7% was recorded in the North, with prices down from £107,400 to £106,600, and Yorkshire and Humberside, where prices were down from £121,600 to £120,700.

Meanwhile, house prices in the South East, outside the M25, experienced the greatest decline of 1.1%, down from £207,800 to £205,500.

It is the 12^th consecutive monthly fall in prices since the start of the credit crunch last year, with the value of an average residential property down 6.2% over the period, representing an average fall of £1,000 a month.

All regions saw a fall in the number of new buyer registrations, with a national average decline of 5.3%, which remains unchanged since August.

Agents in the North West saw the biggest fall of new registrants (7.5%), compared with a fall of just 0.8% in the North.

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