RICS-Jan: Prices falling in less than half the country, 3rd month of improvement

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

LONDON (MNI) - The decline in house prices was markedly less widespread in the three months through January while housing market activity continued to dry up, according to the latest Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors' survey.

The survey suggests the pace of house price declines has eased and may continue to ease. The January RICS survey's seasonally adjusted price balance came in at -31%, up from -39% in December, the highest outturn since July last year. This was the third consecutive improvement in this balance in RICS' monthly surveys.

RICS said the unadjusted price balance, which also rose to -31% from December's -47%, showed more respondents reporting unchanged prices than falls.

The price expectations balance for the next three months rose to -26 in the January survey from -29 in the December one.

Prices now falling in less than half the country, stable or rising in the rest.

3rd month in a row of improvement... Trend continues to move in the right direction.

If it continues at the same rate, we'll be seeing prices rising as a national average by March or April. Which is exactly what you'd expect to happen at that time of year.

DaddyBear

Ahhh, the old improvement in the rate of decline. Spin spin sugar.

IronWolf

The rate of decline slows a bit, and this is somehow good news for you? Lol you are just showing your desperation now, fact is that 31% MORE surveyors reported house prices falls than in December.

That means more and more houses are dropping in price

Batchy

IronWolf wrote: »

The rate of decline slows a bit, and this is somehow good news for you? Lol you are just showing your desperation now, fact is that 31% MORE surveyors reported house prices falls than in December.

That means more and more houses are dropping in price

Wrong

31% more surveyors reported a fall than those who didnt
and in december it was 47%

It is not 31% more than december its actually 16% LESS than december.

The trend is falling prices, but the its swinging back the other way, just like every other indicies shows.

You wont change sentiment over night, it takes a while for people to accept there is a change in sentiment.

CloudCuckooLand

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12382670

"In January, more surveyors saw a decline in new instructions of sales than an increase, while actual sales slipped down in the three months to January to 14.6 per surveyor."

doire_2

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

If it continues at the same rate, we'll be seeing prices rising as a national average by March or April. Which is exactly what you'd expect to happen at that time of year.

Prices rise slightly during the spring. Who would have thought?

angrypirate

CloudCuckooLand wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12382670

"In January, more surveyors saw a decline in new instructions of sales than an increase, while actual sales slipped down in the three months to January to 14.6 per surveyor."

Lets reword this
"surveyors stop marking house prices down as much as they did in decemder and the number of sales have declined"

Thrugelmir

RICS Report for January 2011.

The January 2011 RICS Housing Market Survey shows that more surveyors are continuing to report prices falling rather than rising.

However, the headline net price balance has now improved for three months in succession and at -31 stands at its best level since July last year. Significantly, the non-seasonally adjusted breakdown indicates that a majority of respondents actually reported that prices were unchanged between December and January. Moreover, of those that did signal a shift in prices the vast majority suggested that the drop was very modest (0 to 2%).

Most activity indicators were negative once again albeit a little less so than in the final month of last year. The new buyer enquiries net balance was -7 which compares with -12 in December while the respective results for new instructions were -3 and -14. Meanwhile, newly agreed sales continued to drop at a broadly similar pace to that seen over the past few months.

This weakness in the activity net balances is also being reflected in actual transactions levels. In the three months to January, average sales per surveyor slipped back to 14.6. This compares with a reading of 15.2 in December and is actually the lowest figure since June 2009. Stocks on surveyors books also slipped back during the month with the result that the sales to stock ratio was broadly unchanged at 21.3%.

Notwithstanding the disappointing level of activity, surveyors remain
cautiously optimistic with the sales expectations net balance edging up from 8 to 10. Meanwhile, price expectations remained negative, but less so than last month (the net balance improved from –29 to –26).

Disaggregating the price picture shows that all regions in the survey
continued to record negative net price balances in January although in London this was a mere -4. Moreover, the price expectation net balance in the capital turned positive (albeit only +1) for the first time since the middle of 2010. Second to London in terms of the price balance was Scotland (-11), while the East Midlands (-59) and Yorkshire and Humberside (-46) recorded the weakest numbers. The Northern Ireland reading improved to –28 from -49 (but these figures are not seasonally adjusted).

http://www.rics.org/site/scripts/downloads.aspx?categoryID=409

AD9898_2

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Prices now falling in less than half the country, stable or rising in the rest.

3rd month in a row of improvement... Trend continues to move in the right direction.

If it continues at the same rate, we'll be seeing prices rising as a national average by March or April. Which is exactly what you'd expect to happen at that time of year.

Is this on the back of the lowest lending in a decade and approvals further back than that ? Ah yes. To be honest with the amount of intervention in the housing market, I'd expect it to be booming, it obviously isn't, in fact it's dying on it's feet.

Really Hamish, it's like your swimming in a pool having a great time, but only others watching can see there is no water in it, you just look a bit daft and desperate. Denial is a wonderful thing to some I guess.

Give it up mate, just be thankful you own somewhere and are not a member of the shafted younger generation.

DaddyBear

The sweet and unmistakable scent of a desperate bull.

Graham_Devon

Well. Nice lot of words which don't actually make sense in a sentence.

And still, prices are falling.

"Prices falling in less than half and improvement" all in the same sentence is just confusion tactics, you have to read it twice to grasp what's being said. Then Hamish comes along, plonks two statistics together (rising and static), puts that aaginst one statistic, to try and make out this outweighs the falls.