Roughly two-thirds of estate agents expect house prices to stop falling within the next 12 months, new research has revealed.
A study, conducted by high street bank Abbey, found that around 61 per cent of estate agents believe the property market will make a full recovery by this time next year, while 28 per cent thought it would take between one and two years before prices stabilised.
But 7 per cent of the 100 estate agents polled in the survey thought prices would continue to fall for at least the next three years, and a further 3 per cent thought the current downturn would last even longer.
The current slump in the UK housing market, caused by the credit crunch, was further highlighted last week when Nationwide Building Society announced that prices fell for the eight month in a row during June, with homes costing 6.3 per cent less than they did in June 2007.
However, homeowners are more optimistic about the length of decline, with the average consumer speculating that the prices will stop falling within seven months on average, and no homeowners expecting the current problems to extend beyond 12 months.
Eighty per cent of the 688 homeowners surveyed by ICM said they were delaying a decision on whether to move home to see if prices fell further, while 7 per cent hoped to take advantage of the current market conditions by snapping up a bargain or selling their home and moving into rented accommodation .
Phil Cliff, director of Abbey Mortgages, said: "Estate agents and homeowners believe that, despite current movements in house prices, we are unlikely to experience a really prolonged period of house price falls."
"Most think the period of decline will be over within a year and a very small minority think it will last longer than two to three years."
"While this is 'light at the end of the tunnel', it implies that estate agents and homeowners are bracing themselves for further falls in the very near future," he added.
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Britains Housing Market Decline To End Next Year
Wed, 09 Jul 2008
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