Private property sales is something that has really taken off in the past year or so. Since the UK housing bubble burst, it has gotten harder and harder to sell houses, and estate agents have been forcing their clients to continually lower their prices, and their expectations in order to achieve a sale.

Selling property privately carries a massive saving compared to using estate agents; estate agents charge between .5% and 4% of the sale price, whereas private property sales websites like Zungalow.com offer the chance to advertise to a wide audience for as little as £29 per year. Most people save around £3000 when selling property privately.

Most people who consider private property sales have a lot of questions, like, but the estate agent does the valuation, how much is my house worth? And, who takes care of the viewings?

There are a whole host of house pricing sites out there today. Anyone considering selling property privately can easily value their home:

You can enter your postcode into Zoopla.co.uk and find out how much homes in your area are selling for. Zoopla prices are based on Land Registry figures and recorded sale prices. Nationwide do a house price calculator on their house price index page. A good way of valuing a house for private property sales is to get a figure from both of those sources, and either split the difference or employ personal judgement.

As for who takes care of the viewings private property sales are just that; private. You as the seller are responsible for everything: valuing, making for sale signs, advertising, house dressing, viewings and negotiating with anyone who makes offers, everything.

If that sounds like too much pressure, selling property privately doesn't have to be a bold choice. Private property sales have gotten so big that estate agents are finally facing some real competition. Combine that with the limited numbers of instructions agents are currently receiving and the seller is in a prime bargaining position.

Most people who are selling property privately are also selling with an estate agent; they have negotiated a clause into the estate agent's contract that says if the property is sold through private property sales the estate agent receives no fee. This tends to make the estate agent really work to sell your home and gives those selling property privately the best of both worlds.

One way to leverage the full potential of Zungalow is to always have your property on the market. This strategy only costs £29 per year and allows potential buyers to make an offer should your property be of interest to them.

This is a major shift from the current property system where you only list your home if actively selling.

As the cost for selling on Zungalow is so low it allows everyone to list their property permanently.

To do this a HIPS or Home Report must be in place by law. Zungalow will be introducing a partnership with providers of these services in the near future.

After receiving several requests from users of the site, Zungalow.com has decided to accommodate rental property adverts within the community.

Of course, people looking to let properties out could always add them to Zungalow.com, because it is simply a community site allowing people to showcase their properties for any reason. But the decision has been made to allow more high profile advertising of the fact that said properties are seeking tenants.

The latest data released today from the council of Mortgage Lenders showed UK mortgage lending declined yet further in April, a month after the Bank of England proclaimed mortgage lending at an 8 year low in March.

This means that further falls in UK house prices look increasingly likely, and for one reason or another, more people looking for rented accommodation, which they will now find in abundance on Zungalow.com.

The Rightmove UK house price index for May 2009 has revealed that asking price rose 2.4%, the biggest increase since 2003, while the number of new properties coming to the market was lower than any May since 2003 at just 61,000.

This is the fourth consecutive monthly rise in asking prices the portal has revealed, and some are viewing it very positively. I however, am not.

The rising asking prices combined with the low in new properties coming to the market shows that vendor realism is still abysmal, and that people are still staying away from selling in a down market.

I will never view Rightmove's index showing a rise in asking prices, until the market has verifiably bottomed some time before.

The first time Rightmove's index shows a fall in asking prices, or at least asking prices levelling out, then I will think that vendor realism is obviously increasing and we will be getting closer to seeing the market bottom.

In the meantime, private sales sites still offer the chance to sell quickly without having to drop as far as the market demands, because they allow you to market to a wider audience, and you can levy the savings on estate agents fees against any reduction in price.

Zungalow.com is a private property sales site with a twist; the social media site of private property sales offers sellers the chance to market their property casually for just £29 per year.

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) house price index has showed that the rate of decline in UK house prices slowed in March. This comes after the latest release of the Land Registry index showed the rate of decline slowing in March, and Halifax and Nationwide a slowing decline for April.

Year on year prices were down 13.6% in March, and fell 3.8% in Q1 this year, compared to a 6.4% fall the previous quarter.

A slowing rate of decline is not, in itself, a sign that we are nearing the bottom. After over a year of the worst house price crash the UK has ever seen it is logical that the decline would slow. Spring is traditionally a good time for the housing market, from the low point we are at that translates to a less bad time.

The fundamentals that must be in place before the market will bottom have not been brought any closer:

There are still very few buyers around:

will be helped by recovery in the wider economy and greater mortgage availability.

Vendors are still unrealistic:

will likely be helped by increased buyer numbers

Homes still not affordable for first time buyers:

Will only be helped by prices falling further and by better (higher LTV) mortgage products for first time buyers.

The whole thing is a cycle, the first thing we need is for the recovery of the UK economy as a whole to begin. This will stave off rising unemployment, save jobs, reduce the fear mentality of those in at- risk industries (most people), and create new jobs. All in all more jobs and more job security means more people looking to buy houses.

More people looking to buy houses will increase vendor realism, or bring them to realisation quicker, because there will be no more excuses; the buyers are there, it is only there price that is stopping them from achieving a sale. This will go the same for mortgage lenders, more buyers and/or more realistic vendors will put pressure on the lenders to open up the market or risk snuffing out the recovery they pushed so hard for.

I can't believe what I have just read: on the myfinances blog Sarah Routledge writes:

"Buyer interest is rising, and price falls finally appear to be slowing. But property experts are waiting for mortgage lenders to loosen their criteria and agree more loans before announcing the bottom of the market."

Before announcing the bottom of the market, what planet does she live on? She says it like the market won't have bottomed until it the bottom is announced by property experts. That is not how it works. The market bottoms, then it is announced. Let me explain:

Say the lenders loosened their criteria to 2006 levels tomorrow; it would still not cause the market to bottom. There are so many other factors to consider:

For a start the economic outlook, unemployment and job-fears for those in employment are also a major hindrance on transaction levels; people won't be looking for mortgages in sufficient numbers to bottom the market until there is a wider economic recovery.

Secondly, many vendors are still unrealistic, or unwilling to sell for such a massive price drop; they are turning to house swapping sites to avoid the reality of a major price drop in order to sell. Prices will fall until homes become more affordable for first time buyers, and unrealistic vendors will continue to prolong that fall.

When these problems have been addressed the UK housing market will not need any announcement to bottom, it will just happen. Many positive events will converge, and we will see transaction levels increase very quickly; the market will have bottomed.

In my last article I wrote about the inextricable link between house prices and house affordability vis-a-vis first time buyers. That article attempted to use the dynamics house price correction to forecast the future of this one. The dynamics were tracked using 2 sources: the house price to (first time buyers) earnings ratio index by Nationwide, and an article based on the nationwide index comparing average mortgage repayments to the average first time buyers' take home pay.

The external article forecast a further 15% drop, and my findings led me to warn of the possibility it could be even more than that.

However, today the Centre for Economics and Business Research said another 8% would bottom the market, and there were reports that affordability has trebled since the peak according to the Halifax. Halifax said mortgage payments now take just 31% of first time buyers disposable income compared to 48% at the peak. This is massively different to the Nationwide affordability scales.

Liam Bailey, of Write About Property -- who I would now call a new friend of mine having been in contact since referencing his article -- said the different might be because the Halifax figure is based mostly on couples, as first time buyers usually come in pairs. He is still waiting for Halifax to return his call, which will be tomorrow now.

I was surprised Liam didn't highlight the possibility that the difference could be because of the different areas the companies operate in, and the fact that the Halifax is an estate agent as well as a mortgage lender.

Halifax operates mainly in and around Yorkshire and Northern England, where houses are always more affordable than the rest of the country. For instance at the peak of the boom, average mortgage repayments stayed below 100% of average first time buyers take home pay, whereas the UK average was 136.2% at the time (according to Nationwide's historical index).

If in fact the Halifax's operation as an estate agent as well as a lender is in any way responsible for the massive difference between its affordability index and that of Nationwide, then indirectly Liam is correct; because estate agents deal with the couple buying, and not just perhaps the one who is borrowing

I read an article on Write About Property yesterday, which showed how past house price corrections have come at a time when first time buyers had been priced out of the market, and lasted until first time buyers could comfortably afford to buy houses again. The figure the article mentioned was a further 15%, which would bring average mortgage repayments down to about half the average salary of a first time buyer.

The article was based on a fairly loose prediction of what the current nationwide affordability index (the index of average mortgage repayments as a percentage of average first time buyer salaries) would stand at, because the Q1 2009 figures have not yet been released.

But if we apply the same methods to the House Price vs Earnings ratio (HPER), that is to track how the rise and falls of the last crash measured on the HPER ratio, which does have up to date figures, it paints an even worse picture.

The last house price correction began when, and in my opinion (and Write About Property's) began because gross house prices were pricing first time buyers out of the market; in Q4 1989 when the average gross house price was 3.7 times the average salary of first time buyers.

Major price falls ended in Q3 1993 when the average house price had come down to 2.3 times the average first time buyer's salary. Prices then bounced around the bottom until Q2 1996.

The house prices started growing again, and the HPER index reached had reached 2.5x when there was a growth slowdown which kept it below 2.7 until Q3 1999 when growth began to accelerate. From then on (barring a couple of minor growth slowdowns) the HPER index grew by at least .1x almost every quarter. By Q4 2007 the average gross price of a house was 5.4 times the salary of average first time buyers, and shock horror, growth began to slow before spiralling into the plummet we are still dealing with.

Irrelevant of why prices were allowed to grow to such ridiculous levels, I believe it was because of the investment boom, but whatever the reason if the last crash is an indicator for this one, which I believe it is, house prices will fall until they are no more than 2.3 times an average first time buyers salary.

According to Nationwide the average house price has fallen by approximately 15% between Q4 2007 and Q1 2009. The HPER index has come down to 4.1x. Going by that, if a 15% drop takes only one multiplication off the HPER index, then we need another 30% drop.

I don't actually believe prices will drop another 30%, because the HPER index fails to factor couples buying together, interest rates and many other factors, but between the Write About Property article, and this one, I think there is room for us all to be sceptical about the next green shoots report -- until houses are more affordable to average first time buyers anyway.

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