Agreed house sales in UK at highest point this year, says Zoopla

theguardian.com:

More prospective house sellers are returning to the UK’s property market, pushing agreed home sales to their highest point of the year in May, according to Zoopla, although it warned that the rebound in activity could be knocked by rising mortgage rates.

House prices have fallen by 1.3% nationally over the past six months, the property website found, but the speed of price falls has been decreasing as buyer confidence slowly improves.

Demand for properties remained weaker in May than a year earlier, although last month agreed house sales climbed 11% higher than the five-year average, which appears to have convinced more sellers to put their properties on the market.

While the slide in house prices since Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini-budget last autumn, which led to mortgage rates shooting up, has been more modest than initially anticipated, Zoopla found sales volumes are being affected by higher mortgage costs and inflation. Sales volumes are now expected to be 20% lower this year than in 2022.

It comes as houseowners looking for new mortgage deals have been warned to prepare for fixed-rate offers above 5% in the coming weeks, after recent disappointing inflation figures, and after economists forecast that the Bank of England’s interest rate could exceed 5% by the end of the year.

However, Zoopla said that higher mortgage rates had had a limited impact on house prices, as mortgage regulations introduced in 2015 have required new borrowers to prove to their lender that they could afford significantly higher mortgage repayments, at rates of 6-7%.

Despite the increase in house sales in May, Zoopla found that sellers are still having to retain “realistic” asking prices in order to attract interest from potential buyers, who are