Right move’s second Consumer Confidence Survey of 2011 reveals that the proportion of people expecting house prices to fall over the next year has dropped.

The company surveyed the housing market sentiment of more than 26,000 people and found that the proportion of those expecting prices to fall has gone down from 32.3 per cent to 24.9 per cent.

However, a further finding of the survey was that across the UK consumers feel prices in their local area are over-valued and need to come down. Rightmove director Miles Shipside says: “Our Q1 survey measured the highest proportion of home movers recorded to date forecasting that prices would be lower in 12 months’ time. That was the position of a third of them then, but now that proportion sharing that view has dropped to a quarter.”

The results reveal that just under half (48%) of respondents believe prices in their local area are over-valued, with just 15% of the opinion that they are too low. In London (60.8), the South East (51.7%) and the South West (52.7%) the proportion of those feeling prices were overvalued were in the majority.

“There is a growing sense that many homes coming onto the UK housing market are priced too high and this is borne out by the views expressed in this survey,” says Shipside. We now have a situation where half of the UK public feel house prices are too high, yet three quarters of the same public are expecting prices to either stay the same or increase over the next 12 months. This suggests the prospect of a market stand-off and rising unsold stock levels if sellers don’t wise up to the house price views of their target market.”

Original comment can be found at The House Prices Advisory