The hotter parts of the housing market are beginning to show signs of easing off as house price rises begin to moderate.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says in its latest report that although the market remains buoyant across the country, with all regions seeing price increases, there are definite signs of a cooling in those areas where price increases have been strongest in the past year.

And the RICS is not the only organisation to be talking down the property market after months of 'boom' headlines.

The Yorkshire Building Society and the relocation agency HomeSearch London are among those who feel the Bank of England's use of interest rates to dampen down the economy is beginning to have a negative impact on property prices.

According to the Yorkshire, homeowners and first-time buyers are being put off borrowing money because of concerns over rising interest rates.

It says that 38 per cent of homeowners quizzed in a recent survey said they had been deterred from borrowing money to move home or make home improvements because of rising interesting rates, while more than a third of first-time buyers were delaying buying a home for the same reason.

Around one fifth of those surveyed admitted to being more concerned about repayments than they were six months ago.

HomeSearch, which has private and corporate customers, says reports of a housing boom are really nothing more than a media myth, and the use of interest rate rises by the Bank of England's monetary policy committee is 'a very blunt instrument'.

It says its applicants planning to relocate have either equity to invest or are borrowing much smaller amounts to buy property, adding: 'This indicates that in real terms the housing boom is really a media myth attempting to link current market conditions to the boom-bust conditions of the late 1980s.

'There is little evidence this is happening today and HomeSearch considers that a rise in house prices of over 20 per cent would be necessary to mirror conditions in 1989.'

House price inflation is somewhere around the 12 per cent level, depending on who you listen to, but in London and parts of the South East it has been as high as 28-29 per cent in the past year ,, and that simply is unsustainable.

Not only that, but in every previous boom-bust cycle, prices started rising quickly in the South East before spreading out to the rest of the country, which then followed the South East downwards when the bubble burst.

Although the general economy is still reasonably strong, soaring house prices contribute to inflation and fuel wage demands, and little of the paper profits on houses is then reinvested in a way that helps the economy to grow.

Indeed, many economists argue the UK would be better off if house prices plummeted to a level far lower than they are now because it would mean that mortgages would be that much smaller and millions of people would have more disposable income to spend on consumer goods.

But then another bunch of economists will come along and tell you that this, too, would send inflation soaring and actually be bad for the UK because the money would be spent on foreign cars, TVs and videos.