Rise in house sales fuels optimism

UK house sales reached their highest level in more than two and-a-half years last month as confidence continued to return to the market, surveyors said.

The sales jump helped to send expectations that house prices are set to increase in the next year, soaring to a three-year high, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found.

Surveyors sold an average of just under 17 homes in the three months to February, marking the highest volume of sales recorded since June 2010.

The sales uplift is predicted to continue into spring

Prices were reported to have remained broadly flat, with six per cent more surveyors saying that prices had dipped rather than increased, continuing a trend seen since last autumn.