DAVY VIEW

This morning’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) survey does not point to any clear improvement in the UK housing market. The headline price balance (-39%) is still deep in the red, but there was some modest improvement in sales expectations (-27%) – albeit still pointing to falling transactions. The most striking feature was a fresh acceleration in the decline of new buyer enquiries (-37%) in April. This comes before today’s likely move by the Bank of England to raise rates by 25bps to 4.5%.