Set aside the nonsense about the return of gazumping in the UK. Ignore estate agents telling prospective homebuyers they will have to move fast to snap up the bargain that has languished unsold since last summer.
FT.com – June 9 2009
For as far as “signs of stabilisation” go, the news from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which may even have boosted sterling, was pretty unconvincing. The balance of surveyors reporting house prices drooping further rather than zooming off again is certainly falling, but it remains spectacular.
Dig into the numbers of Rics’s May housing market survey and it is clear that most valuers remain resolutely gloomy. The seasonally adjusted net balance of surveyors reporting falling prices narrowed again in May and is now almost half the levels it reached in June last year. But the latest reading of -44.1, still well in negative territory, is around levels seen during much of the early 1990s correction.
Celebrate that if you like. True, some more forward-looking measures are picking up. The RICS survey also contains more definitive signs that the rebound in enquiries underway for the last seven months is now feeding through into increased transactions.
