House price rises reported says London Mortgage Broker, London Mortgage Advice Monday, 28th September 2009

UK house prices were reported as rising in the three months to September more than those reporting falling property values, surveyors said.

For the first time for two years,The proportion turned positive the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (Rics) survey found.

Shortages of homes for sale and price rises in the South East of England were responsible the report says.

It appears that a lack of supply is underpinning the recovery in most parts of the country. Buyers are chasing homes that they thought they would have time to consider at a gentler pace

Those who were buying were families wishing to upgrade or young couples needing a bigger house to raise a family were active in the market again perhaps.

But surveyors revealed a general view that demand for homes was not matched by the number coming onto the market, and this lack of supply was the reason prices were rising.
Meanwhile the FSA said the number of new mortgage accounts moving into arrears, defined as being behind by at least 1.5% or more of the mortgage loan, dropped for the second quarter in a row, down by 14% from the first quarter to 51,000 new arrears cases.But the FSA commented that low interest rates were slowing down the slide of more borrowers into arrears, but people already behind with their payments were still struggling to pay off their backlog of mortgage repayments.