Asking prices up as demand for homes hits fresh high

The asking price of homes coming on to market have jumped 2.9% to hit a new record.

The average asking price of a property in London is now over £600,000 and a record £299,287 for the rest of the UK, according to listings website Rightmove.

The previous record asking price was set in October 2015 but this has now been exceeded by £2,738.  

The property site’s data also points to a 5% uplift in the number of properties coming onto the market in London compared with this time last year.

Rightmove notes the number of newly listed properties is the highest at this time of year since the 2008 credit crunch

And new supply of first-time buyer homes is up by nearly 10% this month compared with a year ago.

Miles Shipside, Rightmove director and housing market analyst, says: ““For the second month running the highest increase in supply of homes coming to market is properties with two bedrooms or fewer, typically the target purchase of first-time buyers or buy-to-let investors.”

Encouraged by low interest rates, initiatives such as Help To Buy and buy-to-let investors facing increasingly adverse taxes, Rightmove says that 2016 could be the year of the first-time buyer.

Demand for housing, as measured by traffic on Rightmove and enquiries to agents, is also at record levels.  

There were over 127 million visits to Rightmove in January, up by nearly 20% on January 2015, with phone and email enquiries to agents also at an all-time high of over 4.9 million in the month.

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International Business Times