Today two very respected organisations published reports on the prospects for UK house prices.

Firstly RICS, the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors.  For those who do not know, when you get a mortgage on a property it needs to have a valuation by a surveyor who is a member of RICS, thus they have much knowledge on UK property prices.  RICS identified that the modest increases recently experienced have been primarily due to the lack of housing supply on the market, thus creating a shortage for the relatively few buying.  The bottom line form RICS was that they do not see a prospect of a sustained upturn in property prices until the availability of mortgages improves.

Then there was PwC, Price Waterhouse Coopers, a much respected consultancy company.  The PwC assessment of the UK property market was that they expected to see further falls in property prices in 2009 and 2010.  PwC also indicated that by 2020, even with subsequent growth in property prices, they may not reach 2008 levels, thus it could be well over 10 years for house prices to recover to their former peak.

The house4sale view is that PwC are being a little over-pessimistic, the detail of their analysis is not known, but whilst economic growth is challenging the UK population is growing at the rate of 1% p.a., this in itself would have an upward effect on house prices due to the current lack of supply.