UK household sentiment remained positive in May despite political uncertainty brought by the EU referendum, Knight Frank has claimed.
The consultancy’s latest House Price Sentiment Index found 25.6% of the 1,500 households surveyed across the UK said the value of their home had risen over the last month, while 3.6% said that prices had fallen.
That gave an index rating of 61.0, which while higher than the 60.1 recorded in April, is still below the peak two years ago of 63.2 in May 2014.
Sentiment rose among all age groups except the over 55s.
Households in the south-east were the most confident that prices will rise in the next 12 months with an index reading of 79.5, followed by 78.2 in London.
Some 5.4% of UK households said they planned to buy a property in the next 12 months, up from 5.0% in April.
Grainne Gilmore, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank, said: “The steadiness of the headline house price sentiment index during such political uncertainty over the EU is a reflection that the fundamentals of the market remain unchanged – there is still an imbalance between demand and supply of housing, and for those with access to deposit payments, mortgage rates are still near record lows.
“However, there has been some softening in sentiment among those aged 55 and over – the age group who have the largest equity stake in the UK housing market.
“While the sentiment reading for this group is still one of the highest, indicating they expect prices to rise, there has been a notable fall from last month, indicating that the current economic and political climate is affecting some corners of the market.”
The crew and passengers aboard the Titanic thought it unsinkable, the iceberg wasn’t so sure. Interest rates are the iceberg no-one has spotted.
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No sign of the iceberg getting any bigger at the moment, Robert 😉
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Actually Mark Carney did mention it (sort of) in passing the other day but no-one really took any notice. My concerns centre around the financial integrity of a system that operates in isolation from any external governance. I consider Europe to be the equivalent of RICS and ARLA but Gove,Boris and Co as pop up shop lettings listers.
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No one knows what will happen but my money is on nothing like the scare mongering from the stay-in lobby, if only they would come up with facts and if you tell me they haven’t any …. are they are incompetent or hiding the information? The out lobby are coming up with facts all the time, even if you don’t agree with exit.
There is no solid reason for interest rates to drop, the pound to devalue, house prices to collapse as we have our own market that will continue and the rest of the worlds, which we are prevented from access to as a current EU member. The EU needs us just as much and are not going to stop trading with us … are you nuts in believing that would happen? It will revert to pre-common market days where we both had traded agreements until the “common market” scenario stabilises. It is the Federalism that became the animal the EU is today, that most are unhappy with. We signed up for common market trade, not the political control of our sovereignty.
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