Legal News

With new vendors outnumbering successful buyers’ 2:1 house sellers had a tough time last month according to the property website Rightmove which found that someone selling a home in June had only 2.7 seconds to convince a buyer to view their property.
Adverts in local newspapers or on property websites were often the first place buyers search for a new home, but an uninteresting living room picture or poorly written sales message were fatal to a deal when the small number of buyers meant so much less time, said the report.
New sellers outnumber successful buyers with the weather dampening the spirits along with Olympic distractions adding to the challenge of selling homes all the more difficult. Asking prices fell 1.7%, down £4,138, which was the largest drop in July for four years said Rightmove.
It is possible more buyers will emerge over the next six months if a more upbeat view of the economy by the Ernst & Young Item Club proves accurate.
The think-tank’s latest economic forecast said falling inflation and an improving outlook for world trade would bring an Indian summer of growth, though it said the marginal boost to output will still leave 2012 activity flat.
However, offsetting the optimistic tone of its report, it warned that unemployment would continue to rise and consumers would remain constrained by low wage rises and the desire to pay down debts. Figures for unemployment and inflation are due this week.
Peter Spencer, the Ernst & Young’s chief economic adviser, said the spiralling inflation had sliced real wages by 7.5% over the last four years, but the squeeze was almost over. Inflation was now coming back to heel, with fuel duty increase postponed, falling energy and commodity prices, plus tax changes dropping out of the calculation.
The boost to household finances and the subsequent pick-up in spending should be enough to push the UK back into positive territory this year, but consumer-led recovery was still some distance. Longer term, consumers were going to be more focused on reducing their debt burden rather than splashing the cash, for any immediate consumer led recovery he added.
According to the report, real disposable incomes were forecast to increase by 0.4% in 2012, before increasing by 1.5% in 2013. Consumer spending was expected to be flat for the year as a whole after falls in the first half are reversed in the second half. Next year consumer spending could grow by 1.5%.
The housing market has struggled to generate any momentum since the financial crash in 2007 and the number of transactions remains at a historic low.
Official figures for June showed the number of new homes coming on to the market over the next year or two would suffer after a dramatic decline in new house building on the previous month. The number of new housing starts fell by more than 20%.