The housing market was the first to experience decline in the current recession and is expected to be the first to recover.There are signs suggesting that housing has reached the bottom. Enquiries to surveyors, the level of mortgage lending and house builders' intentions suggest that the market will not worsen further, but any recovery is unlikely to have much impact this year.My view is that the market is bottoming out without much sign of improvement. It will be spring 2010 before demand picks up. The market has dropped so much in two years that a 20 per cent increase in housing starts is needed to get building levels back to half those of 2006. In the private and commercial sector, some schemes begun before the recession are still being completed. The economy must move out of recession before spare industrial and office space is filled and developers look at building new sites. Unlike housing, where contracts can be started quickly, it may be two years before industrial and commercial building begins to recover.
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