UK house prices 'will go up again'

Posted: 19 May 2008 11:35:21 GMT

The property market in the UK will eventually recover from its current downturn, an industry expert has said.

The property market in the UK will eventually recover from its current downturn, an industry expert has said.

According to the Property Investors Network (PIN), house prices will start to creep back up again in the next couple of years.

Founder Simon Zutshi asserted that while it seems prices will continue to drop, perhaps by an average of five per cent, they will not "crash down" as some people have predicted.

Mr Zutshi went on to say that he believes that this will be driven by a high demand for housing, particularly as the government is not constructing enough property at the moment.

He explained: "If you look at the statistics; the government say we need three million houses by 2020 - we're only building 175,000 a year at the moment, if we need three million in the next twelve years we need 250,000 a year, so we are not going to have enough accommodation.

"[Builders] are contracting because they can't sell their stock, so builders are now scaling [back]. We are not going to have enough accommodation. People keep on coming to the country, immigration, increasing population, changing social demographic trends, long-term prices will go up again but it’s not going to happen in the next year or two."

Figure from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors revealed that in April 2008, house prices fell for the ninth time.

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