UK HOUSE prices declined for a third month in January, reviving interest among prospective buyers after a slump in viewings late last year, Rightmove Plc said.
The average asking price fell 0.8 percent to 230,428 pounds (US$452,220) from December, compared with a 3.2 percent drop the previous month, Britain's most-used property Website said yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. While the annual price gain slowed to 3.4 percent, the lowest since 2005, the average time for a house on the market declined and Internet traffic on Rightmove's site picked up.
"Enough sellers seem to have dropped their prices to encourage potential buyers to look in larger numbers, suggesting we might see a more active market at this lower price level," said Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove, in a statement. "Now is a good time for bargain hunters to press those committed winter sellers for a deal."
The UK's decade-long property boom withered in October as higher borrowing costs and forecasts for slowing economic growth deterred buyers. The Bank of England cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years in December and economists predict another reduction next month.
The average time on the market for a property fell to 95 days in January from a record 98 days in December. Realtors reported greater interest from buyers and Rightmove's Website received 20 percent more visitors in the first two weeks of 2008 than in the same period a year ago, yesterday's report showed.
"The first signs of recovery are there," Bob Jones, a real estate agent at Intercounty in Bishop's Stortford, a town in Hertfordshire close to Stansted Airport, said. "People are beginning to look again now whereas in the three months up to Christmas viewings had dried up."
In London, prices rose 3.6 percent to an average 398,476 pounds after a 6.8 percent drop the previous month. Asking prices advanced in all but two of 32 boroughs, while time on the market reached a record 94 days this month, Rightmove said.
"While we expect the London market to be more buoyant than the rest of the country in 2008, it remains to be seen if these higher asking prices can be achieved on top of last year's rises," the report said.
December was the worst month for the housing market since the aftermath of Britain's last recession in 1992, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said on January 16. HBOS Plc, the country's largest mortgage lender, said prices dropped in the fourth quarter, the first three-month decline since 2000.
British consumers, with total debt of 1.4 trillion pounds, are struggling with higher loan costs after contagion from the US subprime-mortgage collapse froze lending between banks. The average rate offered by lenders on a mortgage for 95 percent of the price of a property, rose to 6.53 percent in December.