UK house prices rose for a fifth month in September as a lack of homes for sale helped the property market to erase its losses of the past year, Nationwide Building Society said.
The average cost of a home increased 0.9 per cent to £161,816 (S$363,463), the mortgage lender said in a statement yesterday. That took prices to a level last seen at the time of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc’s collapse. It was the first time they haven’t shown an annual drop since March 2008.
The report adds to signs that Britain is pulling out of its worst economic slump in at least a generation as consumer confidence improves and mortgage approvals pick up. The International Monetary Fund on Thursday raised its forecast for UK economic growth next year, saying the housing market is now stabilising.
‘The most intense phase of the recession and financial crisis has probably passed,’ Martin Gahbauer, chief economist at Nationwide, said in a statement. ‘The further increase in house prices is very much consistent with improvements in a broad range of economic and financial indicators.’ The number of houses being sold is still below normal and will probably take another 18 months to return to the level before the financial crisis, the report said. Rising unemployment and banks’ reluctance to lend money are still ‘headwinds’, Nationwide said. Continue reading
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