Media To Blame For Property Boom and Bust, Experts Suggest

The British media is partially to blame for the current housing situation in the UK, Firstrung has suggested.

According to the first-time buyer specialists, shows such as Property Ladder and Changing Rooms led people to believe that housing was a fail-safe investment, warping sellers' expectations and inflating the property bubble.

Since the high point of house prices last year, the onset credit crunch has led to falling values, slower sales and a shrinking mortgage market. Surveys suggest that the average home now costs around six percent less than it did last month.

The culpability of the media for this situation has been admitted to by ex-BBC economics correspondent Evan Davis. Speaking at the Radio Festival in Glasgow earlier this month, Mr Davis admitted to asking himself whether he and his peers did enough to "warn people of impending problems during the upswing". He added: "When everything is going well people don't want to hear it. We suffered from giving warnings a bit too early in the whole cycle."

Commenting on Mr Davis' remarks, Firstrung chief executive Paul Holmes said: "It's a very valid point. There was a mass hysteria related to property that appeared to grip the nation over the last four or five years, and I'd agree with him."

He added: "The BBC is as guilty as everybody else, and so are these programmes with Sarah Beeny, like Property Ladder, and there's a whole list of them. They've certainly not helped. They've made people feel a sense of invulnerability where property was concerned – you couldn't go wrong."
 

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