New buyers have fallen by 4 per cent and average sales price achieved as a percentage of the asking price fell to 95.5 per cent, the lowest since February this year, compared to 96.2per cent in June.
John Wriglesworth, Hometrack’s Housing Economist, commented: “Rising interest rates and speculative fears of a housing crash have resulted in falls in house prices across parts of the country. We still do not anticipate a housing market crash, expecting zero house price inflation for 2005.”
Paragon Mortgages’ July Buy-To-Let Index provided further evidence of the cooling trends in property value, which began in May.
John Heron, Paragon Mortgages’ managing director, said: “Over the past few months we’ve seen landlord property values start to stabilise in the UK. Prices paid by residential property investors are still increasing, but only very slightly”
A report from independent market analyst Datamonitor (DTM.L) released last week revealed that buy-to-let is now equivalent in size to just over 7 per cent of the residential mortgage market, compared to 2.7 per cent in 1999.
