Will UK house prices keep rising?
It should surprise no one that after several months of mild optimism doom and gloom appears to have returned to the UK housing market in the form of a newly released report.
Ernst and Young, a London based economic forecasting group has warned that the recent rise in UK house prices has been a “false dawn” and claims that property values will not return to their 2007 peak for at least another five years.
The report is the latest from a commentator to argue that the recent upturn in prices reflects an unusual position in the market that is unlikely to last. It pointed out that many homeowners are either trapped in negative equity or reluctant to sell for fear of having to absorb the losses of the past two years.
The new report also argues that the increase in prices this year was largely due to an “acute shortage of available properties” and “a small number of cash-rich buyers”.
However the latest figures from mortgage lenders show a continued revival in lending to house buyers. The number of loans granted for house purchase in July this year was 19% higher than in July 2008.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), which published the figures, said they showed the “first material annual growth” since early 2007, which was just before the UK property market was hit by a sudden downturn due to the onset of the credit crunch.
The CML said the number of new mortgages granted to house buyers stood at 56,000 in July, up by 24% from June and 19% higher than a year ago.
The sharp downturn in prices that started in 2007 seems to have come to an end this year, though whether or not prices are actually rising again is a matter of debate.
The Nationwide building society has said that UK house prices are £7,000 higher than the start of the year, while its big rival lender the Halifax says prices are in fact roughly the same.
Ernst and Young argue that as 56% of homeowners have a mortgage, any sustained recovery would have to be underpinned by a recovery in mortgage lending.
However, as the CML acknowledges, banks are still rationing the amount of money they are lending. The continued rationing of mortgages means that first-time buyers still have to put down an average deposit of 25%.
But the cost of mortgages charged at a lender’s standard variable rate has continued to drift down since the Bank of England lowered its bank rate to a historic low of just 0.5% earlier this year.
In July, according to the CML, new mortgages on an SVR were charged an annual interest rate of 3.9%, the lowest since the CML’s records began in 1993.
On a side note, statistics show that moving house, as opposed to buying one for the first time, continues to be the preserve of the middle-aged. The average home mover is still 40, the oldest since these records started in 1974.
