The announcement that house prices fell slightly last month is likely to have worried some sellers, but is the trend likely to continue?
Paul Collins, property editor of BuyAssociation.co.uk, believes there are still a number of challenges faced by the market before the situation will fully improve.
Furthermore, the high volume of sales at the end of last year is likely to have been helped out by the stamp duty holiday, which people rushed to make the most of, he stressed.
"There is the mortgage issue too and the availability for first-time buyers. This will need to settle before there is any proper recovery in the UK property market," he identified.
In some cases, Mr Collins believes sellers have been overly-optimistic when they come to price their properties, which could also have contributed to the market deflating.
He continued: "This comes partly from messages in the media and partly from developers putting their prices up in response to the supply of new build property dropping."
Developers may also have put their properties on the market with inflated asking prices in order to take into account future improvement, he suggested, which will distort the situation further for prospective buyers.
Mr Collins stressed that it is difficult to predict what is going to happen in the market for the time being at least, adding that "anyone who throws in a prediction at the moment is really just guessing".
According to the latest Halifax House Price Index, purchasing costs fell by 1.5 per cent in February, marking the first decline since June 2009 following seven consecutive monthly increases.
Prices in the three months to February were 1.8 per cent higher than in the previous quarter, it discovered, which compares with a 3.2 per cent increase on the same basis in January. |
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