Published on Tue Dec 21 07:00:00 GMT 2010

HOUSE sales in the island have slumped by 15 per cent over the past year, according to one estate agent.

And average Manx house prices have levelled off but remain way above those in the UK.

Cowley Groves director Graham Wilson said the average house price had fluctuated between £260,000 and £350,000 for the past three years and currently stands at £298,764 – but Nationwide quoted an average UK house price of £164,381 in October.

Mr Wilson admitted it had been a ‘very difficult year’.

He said the market was now heavily stacked in the buyer’s favour and vendors had to price their properties competitively if they wanted a sale.

‘Property sales during 2010 are down on 2009 regardless of price band and healthy new listings have resulted in a market that is heavily stacked in the buyer’s favour,’ he said.

‘Having said that, it’s not all doom and gloom as locally, properties are still selling, providing they are very keenly priced and meticulously presented.

‘This activity tends to be in the £200,000 to £400,000 price range and also tends to be the recently listed property as opposed to the older stock.’

Mr Wilson said the housing market had too many keenly priced properties for over-priced houses to achieve any interest whatsoever.

He said today’s buyer’s market attracted the inevitable cheeky offers but these had, so far, been quickly refused, unlike in the UK where prices were falling steadily due to desperate vendors having to sell to bargain hunters for well below market value.

Ian Lloyd, manager of Cowley Grove’s Ramsey office, said: ‘It has been impossible to predict – the market is all over the place.

‘This year there has been no pattern to sales at all.

‘We have sold properties close to £1 million and others close to £150,000. But without any doubt at all it is definitely a buyer’s market.’

Mr Lloyd said properties in the north offered better value for money and some sold this year had gone for in some cases hundreds of thousands of pounds less than if they had been in Douglas or Onchan.

And he said that properties requiring renovation had become one of the popular areas of sales as they were often valued under market price and attracted first time buyers as well as investors.

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