House prices continue to rise due to continued demand and a lack of stock as the government fails to tackle the elephant in the room – supply – according to the latest RICS UK Residential Market Survey for July.

All areas of the UK are suffering supply issues and are projected to see sizeable house price gains over the next twelve months, with confidence most elevated in East Anglia and Northern Ireland.

“More worrying still is the suspicion that the imbalance between supply and demand will lead to even stronger price gains over the next 12 months”, Mr. Rubinsohn said. This has not served to quell people’s interest, however, as 25 per cent reported a rise in demand.

“A coherent and coordinated house building strategy is required”, RICS head of policy, Jeremy Blackburn, said. This should include measures that will kick-start the supply-side’.

But 60% of contributors based in London were of the opinion that their local market is now overpriced to some extent.

“We have turned around a broken housing market, and our affordable housebuilding efforts are exceeding our ambitions and have delivered more than 260,000 affordable homes in the last five years”.

‘London has been stalled by more aggressive graduated Stamp Duty and taxation levied at the highest rungs of the property market, plus the rising value of Sterling compared to the Euro’.

The report from Nationwide showed that house prices rose by 0.4% which was in line with economists’ predictions. This is the highest rate since July 2014 and was a bigger increase than most economists had predicted. This prediction is being made by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

In the lettings market, tenant demand continued to rise while landlord instructions, despite increasing slightly, failed to keep pace once more, according to RICS.

In terms of newly agreed sales, a net balance of 23 per cent said these increased last month.

So while the Government is trying to help buyers onto the ladder, thus further stoking demand, it is of limited use if there simply are not enough properties available in the first place. There had been hopes that once the general election was out of the way, removing political uncertainty then more people would have been encouraged to put their homes on the market.

‘Rate rises will be gradual, but they are coming.

In July, the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) also urged politicians to push on with house building as supply increased.