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Surveyors see hope in bottom end of market

Levels of home buying are still falling, but estate agents are seeing some early positive signs of recovery in the property market. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (Rics) market survey for October points to a slight upturn in prices – although from an historic low.

The balance of Rics members seeing price falls over price rises was up from -84.5 to -81.8.

The main factor found to be depressing prices was the large stock of unsold properties and limited numbers of buyers – but not a surge in distressed selling, as a high number of recession-fuelled repossessions have yet to feed into the market.

The number of new instructions to sell fell, and the number of completed sales per surveyor was down. On average the number of sales per surveyor fell from 11.5 to 10.9 – the lowest on record since 1978 and a fall of 53.6 per cent on a year ago.

Surveyors had on average 80.7 properties on their books.

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