UK property market subdued as Brexit weighs on prices

Bloomberg

House price growth in the UK remained weak in April as the slump in southeast England and London depressed the market, the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed.
The index was unchanged as a dip in new buyers weighed on prices, the report said. Expectations for the next three months are for flat or declining sales across all
of Britain.
The country’s protracted departure from the European Union has been weighing on the housing market for months, hitting the south east and the capital particularly badly. Contributors to the survey continued to cite Brexit as a damping factor. Landlords are also likely to exit the market because of changes to eviction laws and a ban on rental fees, respondents said.
Sellers are becoming “more realistic” about pricing as the market slows, the report said. Sales expectations over the next twelve months showed a slight improvement.
“Although there are signs of greater realism on pricing from vendors, there is little conviction in the feedback from respondents to the survey that activity in the housing market will pick up anytime soon,” said Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at RICS. “The key RICS buyer enquiries indicator remains subdued and sales expectations looking a year out are only modestly positive.”
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research became the latest body to try to put a price on Brexit, with a report suggesting that British GDP in the longer term will be around 3 percent lower in a UK-EU customs union than it would have been had the nation stayed in the bloc.
That’s equivalent to a loss of around 800 pounds per person per year.