From This is Money:
With finance tight and property prices falling, a growing number of homes are failing to sell at auction and auctioneers are demanding realistic reserve prices, or turning sellers away.
Figures from auction specialist the Essential Information Group (EIG) show just 54% of residential properties going under the hammer selling in the three months to August, compared to 71% a year earlier.
And David Sandeman, managing director of EIG, says: ‘Auctioneers are getting harder and harder on vendors and saying prices just have to come down.
‘If you have a house at an estate agent that’s been trying to be sold at £300,000 and isn’t going, then the reserve needs to be £220,000 or £230,000 maximum, not £280,000, otherwise it just isn’t going to appeal.
The dramatic switch from a sellers’ to buyers’ market has seen house prices slam into reverse ? with a shift from annual growth of 11% in August 2007 to year-on-year falls of 11% in August 2008, according to the Halifax h…
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