UK housing market softens in July - RICS
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Thursday 08 Aug 2019
(Sharecast News) - The UK housing market softened more than expected in July, with consumers increasingly cautious due to Brexit, according to a survey released on Thursday by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
The RICS house price index fell to -9 last month from -1 in June, missing expectations for an unchanged reading.
New buyer enquiries picked up a little for the second month in a row, but RICS said this has yet to feed into any meaningful increase in agreed sales. The new buyer enquiries balance came in at 8 in July, still positive but down from 10 the previous month.
RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn said the latest results "will provide little comfort for the market with all the key indicators pretty much flatlining". He added that the forward-looking metrics on prices and sales also seem to be losing momentum as worries about Brexit and political uncertainty heighten.
Capital Economics said: "The latest RICS survey showed a housing market struggling to gather any upward momentum. With Brexit uncertainty poised to intensify in the coming months, we expect house prices and transactions to see little or no growth before 2020.
"We doubt that even the current, weak growth in buyer demand can be sustained in the coming months. That reflects two factors. Firstly, with the government's rhetoric on no-deal Brexit hardening, uncertainty among buyers will soon pick up again. And secondly, house prices are very high relative to incomes, and there is little reason to expect that to change anytime soon.
"So even if confidence were to return in earnest, high prices will prevent buyers from returning to the market en masse."
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