Property prices bottomed out last winter and buyers who have been waiting on the sidelines have already missed the best property bargains, according to the UK’s largest property listing website Rightmove.

It says in its latest report that asking prices rose for the fifth month this year – up by 0.6% (£1,428) between June and July.
 
On its own, such a small increase may be scoffed at but it’s important to keep in mind that the number of sellers actually achieving their asking price has continued to grow over the last few months.  In its monthly national housing survey, Hometrack, the property intelligence group, said that 91.5% of sellers achieved their asking price in July, up from a low of 88.3% in January.

Even the usually conservative Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyor (RICS) had some good news for the property market last week. RICS value properties for mortgage purposes and considering that they can get sued by lenders if they overvalue a property, they always err on the side of caution. However in the most dramatic turnaround this year, only 18.1% of surveyors reported a drop in prices in June, compared to 76.2% reporting falling prices in January.

Yesterday’s Financial Times provided us with two more pieces to the housing market puzzle.

The first was that Aviva insurance group will launch a £1bn investment fund to buy and rent out blocks of new-build residential property in partnership with CB Richard Ellis property consultancy and a big US residential manager. The fund will buy purpose-built residential blocks of 100 units or more in south-east England to rent out, mainly near big transport hubs and on significant regeneration sites that have stalled because of the economic downturn. Can anyone guess what effect this will have on already reduced housing stock in London and SE England?

Secondly - borrowers looking for a new mortgage deal can now add Bank of China to their list of potential lenders, as the Chinese state-owned bank announced it will be targeting the UK with competitive loan rates. With no competition in the UK mortgage market over the last 18 months, all the big UK banks have been sitting on their hands, greedily guarding their (or should I say the taxpayers) purse while cherry picking clients at a leisurely pace.

Entry into this hum-drum market by one of the world’s biggest banks, actively looking for clients, will put a much-needed boot up the backside of the UK mortgage market as a whole. Other overseas banks such as Kleinwort Benson, Investec and Standard Chartered are also rumoured to increase their share of the UK market.

Since the start of the year I have done my best in this newsletter to explain and educate you on the factual reasons why the eventual recovery, and the continuous growth of the UK property market was inevitable. We looked in great detail at the supply and demand issue the UK is facing and how this problem has severely worsened by developers going out of business and/or mothballing developments. I did my utmost to make you aware of the greatest buying opportunity the UK property market has had for 20 odd years, without sounding like a travelling salesman.    

And whilst I’m not saying that we will immediately return to the double digits growth of a galloping property market – the unfortunate truth is that your window to make use of this incredible opportunity is quickly closing. So with property prices and interest rates at historically low levels, the Rand’s incredible strength over the last few weeks and growing signs that the UK market is again heating up – I really only have one question – “What on earth are you waiting for?”