Brits Lose Interest in Property

Two thirds of people in Britain will not buy property in the next 12 months, according to a new survey.

The poll by myfinances.co.uk suggests that falling house prices and the weakening economy has hit would be homebuyers. The study further shows the scale at which Brits have now lost their appetite for property.

Just 9% of those polled said they were planning to buy in the coming year, while a quarter were unsure. Of prospective first-time buyers, those either renting or living with their parents, only 5.6% said they would buy in the coming 12 months.

Some 11% of first-timers said they were unsure and two-thirds said they would not buy.

Homeowners, however, were more circumspect about the chances of moving up the property ladder.

However, a poll commissioned earlier by the BBC discovered that more people want house prices to fall instead of rising. The ICM survey revealed that only one fifth of people want house prices to rise - fewer than the number of people who want them to fall.

The poll of 1,005 people found that only 22% said they wanted prices to go up while 28% said they wanted house prices to fall, however, figures from the survey also show that 46% of people who responded to the poll said they wanted house prices to stay the same.

But in the study by myfinances.co.uk, 42% of homeowners said they would not buy in the coming year, 22% said they were not sure, and 16% said they buy.

When quizzed on where they felt house prices were heading, just 6% thought property values would hold steady, while all others joined the consensus of experts that house prices will fall.

A third of people polled expected house prices to fall up to 5%. The poll shows that 27% of those who took part in the study believed house prices would drop between 5% and 10%, while 24% expect property values to fall between 10% and 15%.

At the same time 9% of respondents expected house price to fall over 20%. The findings by the BBC poll however, cast doubt on whether the political and economic damage done by falling prices is as serious as has been feared.

In the BBC survey, respondents were asked if a fall in house prices of more than 10% would make them more likely to cut back on household spending such as clothes, leisure and groceries.

More than 60% of people said it would either make no difference or would make them likely to spend more. Only a minority 38% said it would make them more likely to cut back.

The BBC survey also found that nearly a third of homeowners have no mortgage on their homes, meaning no risk of negative equity. The poll was commissioned after makers of a new BBC2 TV series The Truth about Property came across a surprisingly large number of people who wanted house prices to drop.

The first part of the series investigates the extent to which Britain's homeowners are “crashproof”- meaning they could withstand or even benefit from price falls.

Economists are concerned that if prices fall too quickly it may knock consumer confidence, already at its lowest for 15 years, leading to reduced spending that could worsen the current economic slowdown.