Office sales in the south east are not being completed due to price disagreements, according to new research.
Commercial properties are being left unsold in the UK due to buyers being unwilling to meet the asking price, the Financial Times reports.
According to consultants Jones Lang LaSalle, around £447 million-worth of property has been taken off the market so far this year for failing to find a suitable buyer in the south east, the nation's commercial centre. Just £309 million was found to have been sold over the same period.
Individual office purchases and large-scale investment deals have both been knocked by the current economic climate, Jones Lang LaSalle found: just last week the £120 million portfolio sale from Royal London Asset Management was cancelled due to pricing differences, for example.
Mark Routledge, director of the consultancy firm, commented: "Funds aren’t chasing the market down any further, as they are not forced sellers…If they don’t get the prices that they want, then they aren’t selling."
Meanwhile, Nationwide released the results of its latest house price survey today, revealing the biggest single monthly drop since 1991 for May. The average property cost was found to have dropped by 2.5 per cent, or £5,000, over the course of the month: this brought house prices 4.4 per cent lower than they had been in May 2007.
