HOUSING experts have warned that negative equity - where the value of a home is worth less than the mortgage - could return to haunt householders in South-ampton.

Particularly at risk are buyers who put down small deposits, or nothing at all, for the original purchase.

According to Home-track, the research agency which gathers data from a selected panel of estate agents to discover trends in the residential property market, the risk of negative equity is rising in London and the south-east, including Hampshire.

Nationwide Building Society warned earlier this year that highly priced new property could be risky in urban areas hit by unemployment and poverty.

Outside the capital, says the Nationwide, there are risks in Southampton, Oxford, Exeter, Hounslow, Tower Hamlets and Slough.

All these were seen as "regions which could not obviously sustain a high price valuation''.

Dale Norton, managing director of The Romans Group, a Reading-based estate agency in the M3 and M4 corridors, says new flats in Reading sold at £210,000 last October are now changing hands for £175,000.

The average cost of a house in Hampshire is currently £147,000, compared to £129,500 nationally.