Tag Archives: UK Property

British house prices fell at their slowest annual rate since June 2008 last month, dropping 4.2 per cent, due to an ongoing lack of housing for sale after the credit crunch, property data company Hometrack said yesterday.

Hometrack’s monthly survey of estate agents and surveyors showed that house prices rose 0.2 per cent in England and Wales last month on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the same rate of increase as in September.

However, this rise was largely concentrated in London, where prices rose 0.4 per cent, while in 84 per cent of postal code areas, house prices were static last month, Hometrack said.

The number of new buyers registering with estate agents grew only 1.2 per cent, down sharply from an average of 7.5 per cent in spring and early summer when many Britons typically start house-hunting.

‘The pent-up demand that has boosted the market in recent months is starting to fade in the face of firmer pricing and fewer clear bargains,’ said Richard Donnell, Hometrack’s director of research. Continue reading →

UK house prices are likely to reverse recent gains as the economy struggles to recover from recession, former Bank of England policy maker David Blanchflower said.

‘The reality is that the real economy is on its back,’ Prof Blanchflower said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London yesterday. ‘If house prices continue to fall, as I believe they will, we’re going to see around three million people in negative equity’, where mortgage debts exceed the value of the property.

UK gross domestic product unexpectedly dropped in the third quarter, extending the recession to the longest since records began in 1955. Recent house price gains and a recovery in stock markets may be a bubble, Prof Blanchflower said.

‘We need to somehow or other get that economy moving again,’ said Prof Blanchflower, a Dartmouth College professor who left the Monetary Policy Committee in May. ‘The worry going forward is what are you going to do about all these folks who are in negative equity?’ Continue reading →