UK Housing Market Problems Mount

RICS has predicted that the number of house sales could fall by 40% this year. This would be the biggest decline in the property market since records began and could cut consumer spending by 8%. The biggest decline was in 1989 when they fell 26%. Sales to day in the year 2008 already 32%.

The slowdown has already affected mining companies, which have seen a slump in business, with the number of trains by 55% in the first three months of this year and by 68% in thelast six weeks. If sales fall 40% this year that 700,000 residential and commercial real estate is less turnover than in 2007.

RICS also predicts that house prices would fall by 5%.

How many people have already registered, household bills rising sharply. This is confirmed yesterday by Mervyn King, warned the governor of the Bank of England, the families, for a further pressure on their household budget bracket, as will energy and food pricesrise.

Set up with inflation increasing to 3.7% - almost double the official target - the likelihood of a further cut in interest rates in short-to medium-term future to raise unlikely. In fact, we could see the return of stagflation - rising interest rates to counter inflationary pressures, while declining economic growth.

Mervin King warned homeowners to expect further price declines, adding that it was impossible to predict the size of these falls. He warned that a sharpDownturn in the economy are not excluded.

According to the latest RICS survey published today, a record number of surveyors reporting house price falls. 82% of agents / surveyors have seen a decline in house prices since the beginning of 2008, the worst rating since records began in 1978.

The figures show that the housing slump is even more widespread than during the last house price crash fall in the early 90s, house prices across the country. AfterSimon Rubinson, chief economist at RIC, "even during the house price crash in the early 90s, some parts of the country you do not beat so much to above."

On a better note, falling house prices, which will be reported, are relatively modest, often with surveyors reporting a fall of less than 2%.

The 82% of surveyors reporting a decline up to the April figure of 66%. It was the 9th Consecutive month that the number of surveyors reporting price falls below increased.

The most affected areas of theCountry East Anglia, North and North-West, where all the surveyors reported falls.