Only 6.8% homes sold within 6 weeks of listing

In November, only about 6.8% of homes in the U.K. were sold within six weeks or less after they were listed, compared to 11.2% in June, according to a report by Barrows and Forrester.

The property market has been moving at an extreme pace in recent years, with a large number of home buyers fighting it out for limited stock as soon as it arrives, according to James Forrester, managing director of Barrows and Forrester. In many cases, we have seen numerous buyers offer a property within a few weeks, if not days, of it being listed online, and this has been one of the driving factors behind the meteoric growth of house price growth that we have seen up and down the nation. He added that homes on the market are lingering longer because of increased borrowing costs.

There has been a reduction in the urgency with which buyers are acting, but that is not to say that homes aren't still selling, or achieving a good price when doing so.

The report says that every region in the U.K. has seen a drop in the number of residences sold within two weeks of its listing.

The data showed that Wales saw 5.8% of homes going into contract within two weeks, compared to 12.3% in June.

The report said that Scotland had the second-biggest decline in two week sales, followed by the West Midlands and the East of England.

The shifts in the time that a property is on the market have also been seen in cities. In Edinburgh sales have fallen 13.9% within the first two weeks, with Glasgow 8.7% Birmingham 6.7% and Sheffield 6.9% experiencing the biggest reductions.

The figures show that only Liverpool and Leeds bucked the trend. In less than two weeks in November, about 15% of houses in Liverpool sold, up 4.5% from June, while Leeds saw a marginal increase of 0.2%.