Hometrack: house price boom over

The Bank of England's efforts to cool the UK housing market have worked, according to a survey yesterday which claimed the boom in house prices was over.

Homeowners were told that the housing market had reached a "plateau", with the property website Hometrack forecasting that prices will stagnate for the rest of the year.

The first fall in house prices in a year last month, a surge in the number of new properties on the market and a decrease in the number of new buyers over the past 12 months all pointed to the end of double-digit annual house price inflation, the report said.

John Wriglesworth, at Hometrack, played down fears of a house price crash. He said: "With the steep climb over, the market has reached a plateau but is in no danger of tumbling into the abyss."