Steel closure dents home price rise
HOUSE SELLERS looking to benefit from a property price hike on Teesside are likely to be disappointed.
Local agents said today that the surprise 5.9% rise in property prices revealed by the UK’s biggest building society Nationwide were not reflected locally - and recent concerns over the fate Corus’ Teesside Cast Products’ plant at Redcar had dented an already fragile recovery.
The turnaround in property values recorded by Nationwide follows a 15.9% price plunge across the country in 2008.
While Teesside had not suffered the worst of the crash, TS-postcodes had taken a battering, but were not looking to have bottomed out.
More bank lending would help get the market back on its feet in 2010, agents said.
Ian McClelland, senior partner at Thirlwells, said: “House prices on Teesside have almost reached a plateau. We are definitely seeing a recovery.
“Consumer confidence is returning, there’s more of a feelgood factor but I don’t believe we will see this kind of price increase here before 2012.
“The news about Corus had an impact straightaway. We had people pull out of sales as soon as they heard.
“Yet we don’t want to see massive increases in prices, otherwise we would be back to square one. A rise in line with inflation would be fantastic, and once the UK banks start making it easier to borrow we will see an upturn.
“It’s still very much a buyer’s market, the problem is that supply outweighs demand many times over, and it’s mainly in the South-east.”
Simon Brown, operations director at Browns Estate Agency, said: “We have definitely not seen a price rise on Teesside. Once you take London out of the equation, most places in the UK have suffered.
“But we have had the majority of the decline now. Over the last two years we’ve seen quite a decrease, but prices have begun to stabilise in most sectors.
“We anticipate a more stable market for 2010, a slight improvement, hopefully with banks increasing their spending a little bit. We’d like to see the banks lending more money and first-time buyers getting a mortgage that doesn’t require a 15% deposit - that would get the market moving quite a bit.”
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