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Typical UK home takes 91 days to sell

Posted 26 October 2016 by Ben Salisbury

New research by Post Office Money finds variation in the time it takes to sell a home but the average time a property is on the market for is 91 days....

The average UK property takes 91 days to sell, according to the latest City Rate of Sale report from Post Office Money Mortgages.

The survey looks at the average period it takes to sell a property in 20 major cities across the UK.

It found that homeowners selling their property in Bristol and Edinburgh had the shortest period to wait for a house sale at an average of 51 and 53 days respectively.

Edinburgh has seen the biggest fall in the length of time it takes to sell a property in the past 12 months, down 25%.

Homes in Swansea and Liverpool take the longest to sell, with an average property taking 100 days in Swansea and 108 days in Liverpool. In general, cities to the west of the UK were most likely to see a long wait for a sale.

John Willcock, Head of Mortgages at Post Office Money, said: “House prices continue to rise across the country but eager sellers should remember that this might not be any guarantee of a successful sale.

“The attractive asking prices can lead many people to put their property on the market, leading to competition in the local market. Even property hotspots such as London are not necessarily guaranteed to sell quickly.”

However, areas that have seen some of the biggest increases in house prices over the last five years, Brighton and London, have seen the sharpest increase in the typical time it takes to sell a property, up to 20% longer on the market than previously. Brighton has seen a 24% increase in the time it takes, with London reporting a 20% rise.

The report said that part of the reason for the changes in the time it takes to sell a property in different parts of the country is due to the changes in the number of properties listed for sale in individual cities.

For example, the average tome a property is listed on the market in Bristol is up by 17.5% this year because strong house price growth has attracted more properties to be put up for sale, even though as a city it sells properties quicker than any other city in the UK.

Every city analysed in the report has seen house prices go up over the last 12 months except Swansea, where prices have remained steady. The average price of a home in the UK went up by 8.7% in the last year but despite the price increases in most areas, there are indications that the housing market has softened in recent months with falls in both demand and supply.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) expects this trend of a slowing of the housing market to intensify in the final quarter of 2016.

John Willcock continued: “Despite these rising prices, our report indicates that the housing market has slowed recently, with falls in both demand and supply. In part, this reflects the introduction of a stamp duty surcharge on second homes at the beginning of April.

 “In the final months of 2016 and in to the New Year we can expect this slowdown to intensify, with economic uncertainty adding to the current pressures faced across the market. As a result, some local property markets could be impacted significantly as weaker demand coincides with more properties coming onto the market (as seen in London over the past 12 months).”

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