House price expectations remain stable, buying sentiment falls
The latest Halifax Housing Market Confidence Tracker finds 71% of the public expecting the average UK house price to rise in the next 12 months, unchanged since last quarter. This is fourteen times the proportion expecting the average price to fall (5%).
HPO, the headline House Price Outlook balance (i.e. the proportion of people that expect the average house price to rise in the next 12 months less those who think it will fall), is +66 compared to +65 in March and +40 in June 2013.
Meanwhile, 47% of the public consider the next 12 months a good time to buy, down 13 percentage points in four months. Over the same period, there has been an increase of 16 points in the proportion who think it will be a bad time to buy, now at 42%.
Other findings include:
- Buying sentiment is more negative in London and the South East where 52% and 59% respectively think the next 12 months will be a bad time to buy property.
- 57% of British adults think the next 12 months will be a good time to sell, the highest for this measure since the survey’s inception. This continues an upward trend in positive selling sentiment since September 2012.
- Just over three in ten (32%) think it will be both a good time to buy and sell over the next 12 months, a fall of ten points since Q1 2014 when this figure stood at 42%.
- Being able to raise enough deposit continues to be the most commonly identified main barrier to property purchase (55% say this), while 49% cite job security as a barrier. But 35% select rising property prices/prices being too high (from a list), up from 29% last time.
- The majority of private renters, 66%, expect private rents to rise.
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Technical note
Ipsos interviewed 1,966 British adults aged 16+ face-to-face, between 4-14 July 2014. Data has been weighted to the known population profile.
