A property search website regulated by professional body of fully accredited agents revealed its survey illustrating an increase in house viewing by property snoopers who has no intention to purchase or move.

Research by a Property Search Website revealed that 20% of people arranged house viewing without any intention of buying. One fifth the people in the survey have even viewed properties that were out of their budget. Londoners in particular stated to be the most curious group within the property market - with 27% looking around properties without any buying plan; while people in Liverpool were resulted as the least curious - with only 6% of them interested in viewing properties with no buying intention.

Despite house viewing out of curiosity, 12% of people in the survey even looked on the property websites in order to get an idea of the values of their neighbours’ homes. Similarly, 5% of the British homeowners are keen to know the value of their colleagues’ properties, as revealed in the survey. Likewise, Londoners were - once again - recorded as the most “nosiest” group, with 16% of them logged onto property search websites to look for the value of their friends’ properties.

Meanwhile, the most active and financially-independent group (aged 25-34) have been illustrated to be the most inquisitive and preoccupied age group with the UK property market -almost 8 out of 10 (80%) within the group are regularly looking at properties even if they do not have any intention of buying or renting. At the same time, 17% of them are “studying” their friends’ and neighbours’ properties and 13% are interested in knowing the prices of their colleagues’ houses.

Correspondingly, a survey conducted by an independent research company found that about 10% of the 1,399 people were interested in checking their own properties in terms of investments; while about the same number of individuals was looking and analysing for the right time to move. In addition, it is reported that the average time of individuals spent looking at properties online is 55 minutes per month; of that, 29% of them were looking between 3 and 5 homes; about 20% were looking at 6 to 10 homes monthly, and 14% of the respondents were checking at 16 to 20 houses per month.

These figures showed a rise of a newly property obsession trend within the housing market. Furthermore, it has been mentioned that not only is this trend occurred among the homeowners; but also spread across the renters - which more than half of them (58%) are keeping an eye on the property market online, as revealed by the survey.

Clearly, Britons are becoming more concerned about the unstable property market that is affected by credit crunch under the economic recession. Their concerns have led them to be extra attentive and alert on properties and motivated them to gather “evidence” to analyse the future property industry. Therefore, it is no wonder that the “property obsession” trend in house viewing and property surfing on internet has become a hobby for most of the Britons.