THE devastating impact of the credit crunch on the region's housing market can be revealed for the first time today.
Figures obtained by the M.E.N. show the number of sales across Greater Manchester has HALVED in just one year.
City centre flats are by far the worst hit - with sales an eighth of what they were at their peak last year.
Prices are also plunging, with the average detached house in Manchester now changing hands for 30 per cent less than a year ago.
But experts say mortgages are so hard to come by that first-time buyers are still unable to take advantage of the drop in prices.
Across Greater Manchester, some 8,428 properties changed hands in the second quarter of 2008. That represents a 46.6 per cent drop on the same period last year, when the figure was 15,788. The fall-off was greatest in Manchester (56 per cent), Salford (48 per cent) and Rochdale (47 per cent).Tameside (37 per cent) and Oldham (38 per cent) have suffered the lowest percentage decrease in sales.
Andy Finch, partner in estate agents Knight Frank, said: "It's a very, very difficult market. We have had slumps in the market historically. The difference this time is the speed at which things changed.
"In the city centre, we have had a market which for a long time was led by investors and the access to funds for them is now probably even more restricted than for owner-occupiers. At the same time, a lot of developers simply can't afford to bring prices down any more."
Mr Finch warned the current crisis was likely to last for several more months, despite the Bank of England cutting interest rates by half a per cent.
He added: "It is very difficult to gauge, but I think it will be well into next year before we start to feel we are coming out the other side." The figures will fuel fears that the boom in Manchester flats, which saw the city-centre population rocket from 200 in the 1970s to 20,000 today, has ground to a halt.
Hundreds of prime apartments are currently on the market in some of the city's most exclusive locations. The latest data shows prices, while also slumping, have fallen at a slower rate than sales.
Manchester council officers say the average sale price of a flat was down 18 per cent in April-June 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. Detached houses were down 31 per cent, but terraced fell just two per cent. Earlier this year, the M.E.N. revealed how the number of empty homes in Manchester had soared to 15 per cent in the city centre. That figure fell slightly, to 14 per cent, in September.
As of last month, some 7,179 private-sector properties had been empty for six months or more - a rise of 1.5 per cent on last year.
The council blamed these `voids' on `buy-to-leave' speculators, who grab properties in the hope of making a killing on the market with no intention of letting them out.
House sales slump
October 10, 2008
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Rt Hon Dr Rev MC Spanner MP QC FCA FRICS JP OK (10/10/2008 at 09:15)
Of course, the council played no part in giving planning permission to these devlopers. And the council is definitely not encouraging their support for the TIF bid.
It's all the speculators fault.
I saw an episode of family gut last night where Mayor Adam West had blown all of the Quahog money on a gold statue. In order to distract people from the real problem, he had a list of top ten distraction techniques.
One of the was "New Yorkers". Of course there is no parallel in Labour policy. Greedy Bankers. Greedy Speculators. Greedy Investors. It all has a ring of Weimar Germany about it and we know what happened there.
citycentre, manchester (10/10/2008 at 09:43)
then they get to decide where we live as well?
Rt Hon Dr Rev MC Spanner MP QC FCA FRICS JP OK (10/10/2008 at 10:18)
The Council should certainly decide what property they build rather than waving the green flag on yet more rubbish cardboard flats that nobody wants to buy.
It is the Council who have tried to cram as much as they can into the City Centre rather than supporting alternatives and then come crying about congestion
It is the Council who will sit there and say that they couldn't have predicted the current conditions when they gave planning permission for these flats but yet speak authoritatively on future congestion as a definite figure.
citycentre, manchester (10/10/2008 at 12:21)
If nobody wants to buy the flats, nobody will build them, in this instance the market regulates itself.
If builders have oversupplied the market, they lose money; if people have bought overvalued property they lose money, this all seems ok to me
Rt Hon Dr Rev MC Spanner MP QC FCA FRICS JP OK (10/10/2008 at 16:19)
That works in a perfect market where all humans are rational.
I don't trust the council to do their job adequately but it does not mean they should not be making the effort.
Chris Green, Chorlton-cum-Hardy (10/10/2008 at 16:48)
Had anyone followed Caroline Flint's advice and taken advantage of the stamp duty relief they would now have lost money which, before long, may be in the order of tens of thousands.