NAEA calls for calm over Nationwide report

Following the release of the Nationwide house price report Peter Bolton King, the Chief Executive of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), has said that news of a fall in house prices needs to be placed into context.

Mr Bolton King said: “This needs to be put into context. We have been experiencing huge price leaps of double percentage points in the housing market in recent years so overall a 1% drop is a tiny proportion of the rise and certainly not enough to throw many people into negative equity the way we saw it in the early ’90s. In addition, a national picture can only tell a bit of the story. We can see from other surveys that the picture is mixed across the country and some areas will be more affected than others, so people really need to look to their local markets to get a true picture.

There is no denying that the credit crunch has affected confidence in the market but it is still important to remember that the underlying factors that support the property market remain: low unemployment, historically low interest rates and a pent-up demand for houses.”