House buyers more optimistic about property market

By Diane Ray. Published on December 19, 2008 This post currently has no comments.

According to a report published this week by the Building Societies Association (BSA), 46% of people interviewed for their quarterly Property Tracker survey said that they felt that now is a good time to purchase a property.

Purchase a Property

This perhaps may sound rather surprising on the back of many other more gloomy property market reports. However, the same BSA Property survey conducted in September showed 34% of people believed that was the right time to buy and in July it was only 27%. So the trend is positive.

This seems to support the findings of the National Association of Estate Agents who recently reported that new buyers are ‘looking to purchase property’.

That said, Paul Broadband, Head of Mortgage Policy at BSA said ‘Although buyers are increasingly optimistic about the future of the property market, it is clear that the threat of recession will mean that even these optimistic buyers will bide their time and wait to see what happens to both property prices and to the economy as a whole before they make their play’.

The survey also asked what change was expected in the average house price for the next year and the answer was a reduction of 8.6%, up from a 7.1% reduction predicted during the July survey.

Access to a large enough mortgage or mortgage at all was seen as a current issue to stop someone making a residential property purchase by 56% of respondents. This was up from 49% in Jul.

Not surprisingly with the rising unemployment figures, 58% of respondents felt lack of job security was now an issue stopping a house purchase. This was up significantly on the 12% of respondents who felt this way for the July survey.

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