22/11/2006

Housing market set to slow down

A leading economist has warned that house prices are set to slow down over the next few years.

David Miles, the chief UK economist for Morgan Stanley and a former advisor to the government, warned that house prices would slow down because they lagged behind general inflation.

Mr Miles, who wrote a review of the UK mortgage market for Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2003, said that the reason for rising house prices over the past decade has been people's expectations that prices would continue to rise rapidly.

He estimated that home buyers were expecting prices to keep on rising by around 10% each year.

Other factors identified by Mr Miles include population growth and the rise in people's incomes.

He said: "A sharp fall in real house prices is likely at some point in the relatively near future though it could yet be one or two years away."

(KMcA)


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