Housebuilder Persimmon today added to the gloom surrounding the housing market after suggesting the lack of mortgage availability continues to prevent a recovery.<\/p>\n
The housebuilder, which is the UK\u2019s second largest by market value, said that while it experienced a slight improvement in sales in during September \u2013 it was not the traditional pick-up noted at this time of year.<\/p>\n
However, there was little evidence of this usual busy period which traditionally sees families flock to new housing developments as the school summer holidays end.<\/p>\n
Persimmon echoed its rivals in warning that the lack of mortgage availability, particularly to first time buyers, continues to be a \u201cmajor obstacle\u201d.<\/p>\n
The housebuilder said: \u201cFurther recovery in industry output and sales will be dependent upon an increase in the supply of mortgage products on appropriate terms.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, on a positive note, Persimmon said it was on target to complete 9,400 homes \u2013 5% higher than 2009 levels.<\/p>\n
It added that it hopes to double its profit margins year-on-year to around 8% and it has already reserved more than \u00a3460 million of sales beyond 2010.<\/p>\n
In other news today, property website, Rightmove, has reported a major fall in asking prices in November \u2013 as vendors cut their prices amid desperation to sell their property before the Christmas slowdown.<\/p>\n
According to Rightmove, asking prices for residential property in England and Wales fell 3.2% in the month \u2013 the biggest drop since December 2007.<\/p>\n
The property website also noted that there was an \u201cunseasonably high number\u201d of unsold properties on the market as buyer demand continues to weaken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Housebuilder Persimmon today added to the gloom surrounding the housing market after suggesting the lack of mortgage availability continues to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-house-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}