Website sceptical on house price rises

02/10/2009

A top property website has predicted future falls in house prices - despite surveys showing that the market has recently stabilised.

David Amstell, founder of property website Briffy.com, said that the market was "still on the way down", a trend which will push more people into negative equity and seeking mortgage assistance schemes and money problems solutions.

Earlier this week, the Land Registry said that house prices in England and Wales had declined by 0.1 per cent over August.

Meanwhile, building society Nationwide released its own index today, showing a UK property price rise of 0.9 per cent for September.

This is also the fifth straight month of increases on the latter survey.

However, Mr Amstell called for caution on hopes of a property recovery from the sharp house price declines caused by the credit crunch.

"I've said in the past year or two [that] the market's still dropping, and these statistics that people keep coming out with to try and show otherwise – it's just massaging the figures.

"The fact is that there's less activity out there. I think last month there was a 17 per cent increase in sales, but if there was only one sale a month before, two or three sales the following month is going to make it a 60 per cent increase, so it's all nonsense - it's just statistics."

Tags; Housing Debt and Bills, Young Family Finances,

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