Another fall for house prices in February
March 24, 2009
Britain’s largest building society, the Nationwide, has recently reported that house prices in the UK took yet another battering in February, with property prices reported to have fallen by around 1.8 percent.
Officials from Nationwide said that confidence in the property market in the UK failed to pick up, resulting in a further fall in house prices. The figures showed that the average house price in the UK has now fallen by 17.6 percent over the past twelve months, taking the average house price to below £150,000.
The lender also said that whilst the series of base interest rate cuts, which has resulted in the base rate falling to just 0.5 percent, have helped many homeowners enjoy greater affordability when it comes to making their mortgage repayments no real effect has been seen in terms of property sales.
However, it did state that there was an increased level of interest from would be buyers following the base rate falling to fresh historic lows, although many were failing to convert into actual sales.
The chief economist at Nationwide, Fionnuala Earley, said that as a result of falling house prices and plummeting interest rates property sales levels could pick up quite quickly once the level of confidence in the UK’s housing market increased. However, she did say that this was not going to be an overnight process, and that it could take time for confidence in the markets to improve.
She stated: “Further cuts in rates will be welcome in the housing market, but the economic conditions that require them will mean that there is unlikely to be a swift turnaround in the housing market in 2009.”
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