A third of homeowners do not think think the value of their property has been affected by a downturn in the housing market, new research has shown.

Some 32% of people said they thought their home was worth either the same or more than it was 12 months ago, property valuation site zoopla.co.uk found.

The fact that official house price indexes show homes have lost nearly 13% of their value during the past year does not seem to have had an impact on their opinions.

The Fly Research study of 1,000 people also showed that 97.3% of UK house prices have fallen during the period, with just 2.7% now worth more.

On top of that homeowners continue to expect their property to buck the trend, with 38% saying their home would either hold its value or increase.

Despite that, only 19% think house prices across the country will not fall during the coming 12 months and 16% expect their neighbour's home to be worth a lot less in a year.

But just 5% of people said they thought the value of their property would decrease significantly during the period and 30% said the price of their home will rise.

Alex Chesterman, chief executive of zoopla.co.uk, said: "Our survey indicates quite a significant gap between perception and reality and perhaps more interestingly how homeowners perceive the value of their own home versus those of their neighbours.

"Clearly, there is some element of denial at play here that results in people believing that they are insulated from the market troubles that affect the homes around them.

"This also spills over into market confidence, where more homeowners surveyed expect the value of their homes to perform better over the coming year than in the past year, indicating that many believe the worst is over despite little evidence to support this."

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