Looks like the house price crash may be underway folks .......
Financial Times
Pessimism pervades UK housing market
By Friederike Tiesenhausen Cave and Chris Giles in London Published: June 14
Estate agents and surveyors were more pessimistic in May about house prices than at any time since November 1992, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reports on Tuesday.
But a depressed housing market and weak consumer spending do not guarantee a cut in interest rates, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, said in a speech on Monday night.
In its closely watched monthly survey, Rics said 49 per cent more estate agents reported house prices had fallen over the past three months than said prices were rising, the worst seasonally adjusted reading for more than 12 years.
The figures suggest the housing market has again weakened sharply, after a few months when it had appeared to be stabilising.
The reading will disappoint many property professionals who argued throughout the spring that the market was bound to pick up once the uncertainty of the general election was out of the way.
Rics says on Tuesday that contrary to expectations of a post-election recovery: "Uncertainty over the economic climate has begun to dampen the mood of potential buyers despite the fact that the jobs market remains firm."
A small recovery in buyer activity, which started at the beginning of the year, has run out of steam as surveyors reported that overall sales levels had remained low. Completed sales in May were down 29 per cent on a year ago and enquiries from would-bebuyers slipped back in Mayafter having been at avirtual standstill for severalmonths.
The volume of new property coming on the market for sale continued to rise at a firm pace. Stocks of unsold property were 25 per cent higher than a year ago but have held relatively steady in recent months.