According to the latest Housing Market Sentiment Survey from Zoopla, optimism around the housing market outlook is significantly improved from one year ago, when less than one third of homeowners (30%) expected house prices to rise.
According to the survey, only 9% of homeowners believe that property values will fall over the next six months whilst a further 10% expect prices to remain flat. The average growth predicted by those surveyed is for house prices to rise by 5.7% by October.
The current level of optimism bodes well for market activity, with transaction volumes expected to rise significantly over the coming months. However, the availability of mortgage financing remains the main obstacle to a sustained improvement in the housing market with four out of five (78%) of those surveyed saying that it is now easier to obtain a mortgage than it was three months ago. And the upcoming election is also a clear factor in terms of current market activity with almost a quarter (23%) of those surveyed stating that they will wait to assess the outcome of the election before making any property-related decisions.
