Bad weather 'not having an ongoing effect on housing market'

The housing market will not suffer due to the icy weather, an expert has said.

Anyone seeking a home loan deal such as a tracker mortgage was unlikely to have witnessed the housing market being overly affected by the spell of icy weather that enveloped much of the UK over December 2010.

The festive period in Britain was characterised by a flurry of snowy conditions which had a slight impact on sales of properties, but this will not have an ongoing effect on the country's housing and mortgage sector as a whole, an expert has said.

According to Helen Adams, managing director at online resource First Rung Now, the cost of residential properties is instead likely to remain flat throughout the coming 12 months.

"I think that demand is perhaps a little bit worse than last year and sales were down a bit because of the weather. It might have had an effect just before Christmas but I don't think that it is really going to significantly affect the market for the whole of the UK," she remarked.

Ms Adams was speaking following the publication of research by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors last week (January 18th 2011), which stated that the level of completed house sales stabilised at the end of 2010, but the outlook for the property market remains mixed for the foreseeable future.

This study found that the highest level of transactions in the country was seen in Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands in December, while the lowest was in East Anglia.

The specialist from First Rung Now went on to say that if prices are slightly depressed or dipping, this represents a good time to negotiate and get a better value deal on a property.

Meanwhile, Halifax revealed recently (January 10th 2011) that the average cost of a house in the UK slipped by 1.6 per cent to £162,435 last month.