Homeowners are being urged to keep faith with the market in Swindon, despite recent figures showing there has been a fall in house prices nationally.

James Pyle, who heads up the Swindon division of independent Wiltshire estate agents Straker Goodman Ingram, said worries about the economy would turn out to be a blip and people wanting to sell would still be able to get a realistic price for their property.

He was responding the figures published last week by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors which showed that U.K. house prices fell in September for a second month, the first back-to-back drop since 2005. The number of estate agents and surveyors saying prices dropped outnumbered those reporting gains by 15 percent, compared to three per cent in August. And the number of potential homebuyers fell the most since 2003.

“There have been concerns lately about the economy, but this hasn’t led to a fall in house prices,” said James. “It has merely meant that those people who were perhaps over-optimistic in the price they were asking for – which you can sometimes be in a very strong market – have had to be more realistic and drop their prices.

“For those wanting to sell, if their agents help them to price their properties realistically, should still be able to sell their homes within six to eight weeks, as has always been the case.

“In the last four months at Straker Goodman Ingram we have not seen a price fall and we continued to sell the same volume of properties.”

James Pyles’ words should reassure those who were holding off selling their homes.

He said: “Concerns about the market have made some people delay putting their homes on the market but this is not like the early Nineties when house prices fell by 50 per cent. This is just a blip, as we have had other blips from time to time in the last 12 years when overall we have had extremely steady growth in the housing market.

“I would say that if you want to sell, then don’t hold back, get advice from your agent, price your house realistically for the market and you should have no problem selling at all.”

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