HOUSE prices are set to continue growing in York over the coming year - just not as quickly as before.

That is the upbeat view of two leading experts, who believe that long-term prospects for the city's housing market are strong.

Chartered surveyor Jonathan Charters-Reid, of Charters-Reid and Associates Ltd said the interest rate rises over the past year would "put the brakes on," but this would only result in prices growing more steadily.

He said people needed to be realistic in the prices they were asking for their properties.

He believed that in the long-term, the market would pick up, helped by the underlying strength in the York economy and high employment, and by the arrival of foreign nationals, people living longer and an increase in the numbers getting divorced.

Mr Charters-Reid, who recently became the local regional spokesman for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), said the introduction of Home Information Packs (HIPs) should not have the negative effect that some had feared.

They would not push up overall costs for people moving house; the costs would instead simply be transferred from the buying process to the selling process.

His comments were echoed by Ben Hudson, of estate agents Hudson Moody, who claimed that York's housing market remained a solid investment.

"York is a city on the up and up, and like similar cities such as Bath and Chester, its core has eternal appeal," he said.

"People who live in nearby towns choose to live in York and commute. The historic city is also moving with the times, with the massive expansion to its university over the next decade."

He said the housing market throughout the UK was going through a "correction" but, although a downward cycle was bound to come, he believed York was better placed than many other cities to ride this out.

He said when house prices in other parts of the country fell significantly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, York's tended to level out and plateau.

"I predict that in the short- term, the housing market will see a slowdown but, by the middle of 2008, we will be back on a more even keel, with a more stable market and slower house price growth than we have seen in the immediate past."