Caution urged on asking prices
A Newcastle-under-Lyme estate agency is urging house sellers in North Staffordshire to be more realistic about asking prices, after seeing raised expectations following the recent recovery in the housing market.
Heywoods Estate Agency, which has offices on Blackfriars Road in the centre of Newcastle, is warning homeowners not to get carried away following a steady stream of news reports in the last few months of a renewed upward trend in house prices.
According to the most recent figures from two of the country's biggest mortgage lenders, the Halifax and Nationwide Building Society, house prices have risen for the last five months in a row.
But Heywoods decided to make the call after a report published by online property search company Rightmove revealed a fall in average asking prices in England and Wales for the second month in succession.
Heywoods said that, although a seasonal drop in asking prices was the norm at this time of year, sellers nevertheless needed to keep the current talk of house price inflation in perspective if they were to avoid overpricing themselves out of the market.
The company also pointed to the latest statistics from the Land Registry, which showed that average selling prices in the Stoke-on-Trent area still remained fairly static, increasing by a modest 0.7% a month.