31-01-2008
RICS index highlights poor housing market accessibility
News by Adfero for Simply Business - independent providers of public liability insurance, business finance, landlord insurance, buy-to-let mortgages & commercial mortgages.
An accessibility index devised by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has found that housing market accessibility conditions have worsened considerably since 1996.
The index, which takes into consideration the whole of the UK, has found that since 1996 - in terms of cost - access to the housing market has deteriorated by a total of 351 per cent. RICS has taken 1996 as the year for benchmarking, as the organisation considers that year to be the most accessible.
The organisation has also noted that the effects of the credit crunch continue to be felt, with mortgage lenders requiring customers to provide increasingly larger minimum deposits. "At the start of 2008, first-time buyers are finding it even harder to get a foothold on the housing ladder and the signs are that conditions are unlikely to get better in the short term," said David Stubbs, a senior economist at RICS, an organisation with a history going back to 1868.