After recent months of positive media reports suggesting that property prices are now on the rise and that the worst was behind us we are now seeing an increasing number of economists and industry experts painting a more pragmatic picture, one of uncertain times ahead, much the same as we have previously suggested in our blog.
Firstly the Chief Economist of Halifax, Martin Ellis, suggests that the recent increases in house prices have been largely due to an “increased demand with low level of properties available for sale” and “improvement in affordability”.
Carter Jones property consultancy, David Smith, said that “we have to expect more turbulence ahead, especially given rising unemployment and the fact that, at some point, interest rates will have to rise”. Has he been reading our blog?
CBRE, Jennet Siebrits – head of residential research, commented that “the number of sellers has started to rise” and that this could re-dress the balance of demand-supply as the sellers start to outnumber the buyers, thus “leading to further house price falls”.
Overall there seems to be an increasing consensus, much as we have already reported, we are not yet into a period of sustainable growth in property prices.
Here is one of our posts from August outlining prosects for UK property prices ..http://www.repaymortgage.co.uk/blog/2009/08/16/uk-house-price-predictions/
You can browse more of our posts on property prices here … http://www.repaymortgage.co.uk/blog/category/ukhouseprices/
