HOUSE prices in parts of York could plummet by up to ten per cent this year, business information analysts claimed today.

York is one of several cities singled out for a drop in prices in a major study of the property market carried out by business information company Experian.

The company identified 25 property postcodes that have "overheated" in the past few years and now faced a ten per cent drop.

These included the postal district YO23, which covers Bishopthorpe and the South Bank area of York.

According to the survey, the average house price in the YO23 district is now £177,706, an increase of 87 per cent on last year.

Spokesman Bruno Rost said: "The current property mania cannot continue. The economy is struggling and people in some areas appear to be paying over the odds for their homes."

Estate agents in the city said the prediction was extremely unlikely to come true.

Ben Hudson, partner in Hudson Moody estate agents in High Petergate, said if York saw such a dramatic fall in prices, then other parts of the country would be in "freefall".

He said: "Most people are predicting increases rather than decreases. We have already seen increases this year and we are expecting it to level off in the summer. There is no reason to say it's going to go down, there's a shortage of property available, people are fighting over those that are available, the jobs market is still good and we are close to the major conurbation of Leeds. I don't think we'll see the great fall in prices predicted - a ten per cent fall would be very dramatic and even in the late 1980s we didn't see that in York. If that happened then other parts of the country would be in freefall."

Updated: 11:47 Monday, March 11, 2002