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Peak prices for houses far off
HOUSE prices will not return to the high point they reached in the autumn of 2007 for at least another five years, according to Ernst & Young’s Item Club.
Hetal Mehta, Item’s senior economic adviser, said the recent rise in property values is a “false dawn” that will not last beyond the spring.
Item predicts that house prices will drop in the first half of next year, then stagnate for two more years.
The market will only pick up in 2011 and it will take until at least 2014 for prices to return to their 2007 high, Item says.