Nationwide’s survey reveals 15% fall in house prices

Posted under General by Alan

According to the Nationwide Building Society, the unabated slump in the UK house prices continued for the 12th consecutive month.

The latest survey by the Nationwide, points out that prices went down by 1.4% in September, taking early rate of fall to 14.6% from 12.4%. This fall has wiped off £27,000 from property value taking average cost of property to £158,872.

Nationwide reported that number of completed housing sales had touched lowest level since 1974. According to its chief economist Fionnuala Earley, number of purchase transactions completed as proportion of total mortgages stock was at lowest level since beginning of the series 34 years ago.

She stated that housing and mortgage markets were bound to be impacted by financial instability and recession and as a result house price recovery would move at much slower pace.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has predicted 25% fall in house prices from peak of last summer. It believes that until 2013, house prices would not recover to the peak it reached in 2007. As per this forecast, 2.5 million homeowners are likely to go into negative equity.

According to Standard & Poor’s, 60,000 homeowners were getting pushed into negative equity each month on account of price slump.

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