Recovery not hit by election

The housing recovery is immune from election worries, claims the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

The upturn was confirmed by a reported 10.6 per cent increase in house sales in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 1996, according to the Corporate Estate Agents Property Index.

More than 10 per cent of RICS members in a housing market survey believe that house prices have risen by more than five per cent over the last three months. The upturn is mostly from improving conditions in London, the South East and the West Midlands.

"Neither the impending general election nor the possibility of an interest rate rise has dented the recovery in the housing market," said a spokesman for the RICS.

He claimed that the outlook for the property and construction markets is the "brightest it has been this decade".

The spokesman said the strong recovery was not a "boom" like the huge increases in property values in the late 1980s. "Demand now is not as great, supply levels are similar and sales are lower," he said. Transactions are running at 1.3 million per year, compared with 2.2 million in 1988, just before the economy crashed.