The cost of property fell this month, an online property portal has suggested.
House prices fell by 1.2 per cent so far in June, newly-released research from online property firm Rightmove has shown.
The drop, which cancels out the similar gain in prices made on the Rightmove survey in May, comes as homeowners begin to realise the full impact which the credit crunch has made on demand for new housing. Since the financial crisis hit last summer, many mortgage firms have tightened up their lending criteria, resulting in less home loans being on offer - while rising food and fuel prices have also put many consumers off buying a property.
Accordingly, the average price for a home has declined to £239,564, which is just 0.1 per cent above the total measured in June 2007. Rightmove is also predicting a move in to negative year-on-year growth over months to come, as mortgage deals continue to dry up and budgets remain tight in the credit crunch.
"In spite of the lowest housing transactions for 30 years, new sellers had been coming to the market asking record prices; it was a mad state of affairs that defied the laws of economics," commercial director of Rightmove Miles Shipside commented.
"Thankfully, new sellers are now taking some proactive steps to price more realistically from the outset to attract increasingly hard-pressed buyers."
