Overall, average prices fell by 0.4% in September. The South West posted the largest monthly decline of 0.6% followed by -0.5% in the South East and East Anglia.
Demand for housing dropped by -2.9% in September. This is the third month in a row that demand has fallen.
In the last 3 months, the volume of buyers registering with agents has fallen by 6.5%. While the supply of homes coming to the market has grown by 7.2% over the past 3 months, the rate of growth has been slowing. Supply rose by 1.2% in September compared to an average growth of 3.3% per month over the last 6 months.
The extent of house price falls increased over September with prices down across 34% of the country compared to 30% in August and 12% in July.
The widening gap between supply and demand has resulted in the average time on the market rising to 9.3 weeks - the highest level for over a year. The proportion of the asking price being achieved has dropped to 93.2% from a recent high of 94.3% in June 2010.
Commenting on the latest monthly national housing survey, Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said: “House prices fell by -0.4% in September and for the first time since April 2009, price falls registered across all regions.
“This is the third consecutive month of house price falls and is part of an ongoing re-pricing process which began 6 months ago in early spring, and which is set to stretch well into 2011. The market is now entering the second phase of the re-pricing process as a response to falls in both sales volumes and demand.
"Over the rest of the year and into early 2011, agents will start to focus on re-pricing the property on their books to a level where transactions volumes are maintained. Talk of a double dip, with the implication being that the market will see double digit house price falls, is over-done despite the weak outlook for demand. We expect a slowdown in the volume of homes coming to the market to limit the scale of absolute price falls over the next 12 months.”
