News
London housing market confidence warms up
• 68% of homeowners in London now expect house prices to rise after 8 months of price falls.
• 18% expect values to decline further over the next six months.
• Growing confidence leads to a rise in owners planning home improvements in 2011.
Two in three (68%) homeowners in London expect house prices to rise over the next six months, according to the latest Zoopla.co.uk Housing Market Sentiment Survey. Confidence in the market outlook has strengthened from the end of last year when 63% of homeowners in the region expected prices to rise, but remains some way below the levels seen one year ago when more than four in five (82%) expected prices to climb. London homeowners expect the value of properties in the region to rise by 2.7% over the next six months (up from 1.7% in December 2010).
Across the rest of the UK, homeowners are similarly optimistic, 59% believe prices will rise over the next six months. According to 7,984 homeowners surveyed by Zoopla.co.uk, house prices are expected to rise by an average of 2.8% over the next six months, noticeably up from the 1.9% predicted three months ago. The number of respondents who expect values to drop over the next 6 months has fallen to 1 in 4 (25%), down from 1 in 3 (33%) in December.
And, in typical British fashion, homeowners remain more confident about the prospects of the value of their own home compared to those of their neighbours. On average, homeowners predict the value of their own properties to grow by 3.2% over the next six months while they expect overall prices for property in their area to rise by only 2.8%.
Improved confidence in the future of the property market combined with the arrival of spring has resulted in a rise in the number of homeowners planning to conduct home improvements over the next six months to 40% of all households. And contributing to the increased confidence in the property market is the feeling that lending conditions are improving, with 12% of respondents stating that mortgage availability is better now than 3 months ago.
Nicholas Leeming of Zoopla.co.uk, commented: “After almost 9 months of falling confidence and falling house prices, it looks like the property market is now starting to turn a corner. Falling prices have created attractive buying opportunities and with continued low inventory of property on the market, homeowners are increasingly expecting prices to rise in their local area. We still remain somewhat short of the confidence levels seen in early 2010 but there has been a clear improvement over the previous quarter and this is welcome news.”
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