According to experts it will be up to 8 years before the housing market reverses! Though it isn’t all doom and gloom as other regions will bounce back within 4 to 5 years.
Estate agents were already shocked by the news of web site
Rightmove loosing a large share market this week. Savills said “House prices in London, the South East and Scotland are likely to have returned to their 2007 levels by 2012.But at the other end of the scale a full recovery is not expected in the North East and Northern Ireland until 2016. Property transactions were currently running at half of last year’s level, while the number of new homes being built is expected to continue to fall. This property market downturn has affected virtually all property sectors and UK regions simultaneously but regions will vary far more when the upturn comes.”
Demand for property began to increase again. The credit-crunch is blamed and has caused people to be a lot more cautious. The recovery would start to take full swing once peoples confidence in the market was restored.
Interesting article – that the UK housing market would take a much longer time to reverse than the housing market in the the US. One reason is that the US has had the benefit of expansionary monetary policy on its side; the Fed has lowered short-term interest rates 3.25% since September 2007, which is holding mortgage rates at low levels. On the other hand, the Bank of England has not accommodated UK’s week economy with expansionary policy; the BoE cut short-term rates just once, 0.24% back in April. So the housing market is facing falling prices, rising mortgage rates, and all with no expansionary monetary policy expected.
It will take a long time for the UK housing market to reverse – 8 years is a lot, but if that is it, that is it!
It seems a year and a half on this has proven to be the case in the Uk Housing Market for 2009