JANUARY has brought a flurry of activity on the housing market in Worcester, according to the latest housing market survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

House prices in the region continued to level during December, reaching the lowest rate of decline since August 2004.

The number of chartered surveyors reporting that prices had remained static in Worcester was the highest for more than 10 years. The number reporting a fall in prices dropped from 49 per cent in November to 17 per cent last month, with just 2 per cent reporting an increase last month, down from 6 per cent the previous month. Surv-eyors remain confident in the sales outlook for the coming months, but expected prices to remain quite constant.

"Buyers' activity during the late summer period of 2005 produced a tremendous number of exch-anged contracts during December with a resultant reduction of available stock at the beginning of 2006," said Worcester RICS spokes-man David Stuart-Smith of agents Andrew Grant.

"Buyers are now faced with a lesser choice and may not be quite so able to enforce a downward movement on price.

"Buyer enquiries, viewings and offers are unusually high for this time of the calendar year and therefore now is clearly a very good time for sellers to contact their estate agent and get their properties presented to the market. In the UK as a whole, house prices rose for the second month after 15 months of falls. An increase in buyer activity and property sales has boosted surveyor confidence. Eight percent of surveyors reported a rise in prices.