Asking prices are on the up this month, but this should not be seen as a lasting recovery, new research suggests.
A new study from Rightmove seems to show that house prices continue to rise in England and Wales.
According to the property website, asking prices for property now stand at an average of £242,500, a 1.3 per cent increase over the previous month. The new survey also pulls up the annual rate of asking price inflation from 1.3 per cent to 2.2 per cent.
Rightmove's research also stands against the most recent house price surveys from lenders Halifax and Nationwide, which both tracked slight falls in the property market. Many analysts are predicting this downwards trend to continue throughout the year due to the general economic slowdown.
Government briefing notes revealed, apparently accidentally, by housing minister Caroline Flint on her way to a cabinet meeting last week also predicted a 'best case scenario' of a ten per cent fall in UK house prices by the end of 2008.
For its part, the new Rightmove survey tracked falls in six of the ten regions analysed, and a genuine recovery in prices as a whole was also discounted by the firm as an explanation for this month's increases.
Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove, commented: "Sellers who are hanging out to achieve last year’s prices need to accept that the market has fallen and that they will end up being punished by a lower price in the long run."
