An estate agent says the Bolton housing market is on the cusp of a tipping point set to help buyers.

Although it won’t be a market crash, Matthew Fish from Bolton estate agents Harrisons, says the Bolton property market goldmine of the last few years will come to an end.

The reason for the shift in the market towards buyers is because the Bank of England base rates still sits significantly lower than in years of a market crash.

The Bank of England base rate stands at only one per cent at the moment, but in the 1980s - when the average base rate was 12.63 per cent, and the 2000s -when the average base rate was 4.7 per cent, these high base rates contributed to the property market crashes of the early 1990s and 2008.

Matthew said: “The Bolton property market is on the cusp of a tipping point.

“It’s a tipping point that will influence Bolton house prices, the number of properties available to buy, demand for those Bolton properties and the lives of every homeowner and the property-owning buy-to-let landlords in Bolton.

“Secondly, and more significantly, this shift in the Bolton property market is not a collapse."

The base rate is now up to 1.25 per cent but economists don’t see it rising past three per cent.

This means the prospect of a housing crash is minimal because of the comparatively low unemployment and base rates still at all-time lows.

Matthew said: “The statistics show a slight shift in the scales between it being a 100 per cent seller’s market for the last two years to more an 80 per cent sellers and 20 per cent buyer’s market."

Matthew says this is because the number of houses for sale has grown by 17 per cent in six months.

Nationally, the number of properties available to buy has increased by 17.07 per cent in the last six months, rising from 389,558 in January to 456,048 by the end of May.

The stark shortage of properties to buy in the last couple of years has caused national house prices to grow by 19.66 per cent.

The number of house price changes has increased by 69 per cent since January, which means Bolton house sellers have to be more realistic with their pricing to get their properties sold.