Land Registry Figures - house price fall starts to ease - 01.06.2009

Author: Michael Aglony Posted on: 01 June 2009

According to the Land Registry, the average house price fell by 0.3% in April compared to 0.4% drop in March. The Land Registry found the annual rate of decline remained at 16.2% and the average house price now stands at £152, 898. Nationwide's House Price Index from last week put the average house price at £154,016 and claimed a 1.2% rise in house prices in May.

At this point of the property cycle, there will always be conflicting data, month by month, and source by source. We would expect that there will be some positive figures from Nationwide that wouldn’t necessarily agree with data from Halifax and Land Registry. The market will continue to show what appear to be contradictory messages in any given quarter as different sampling measurements can produce different outcomes.

The market will continue to bump along in this fashion for a while yet. A recovery will have started when two out of these three sources report 3 months consecutive improvement in house prices.

When Halifax, Nationwide and Land Registry all agree that price are recovering, I suspect that new stories will be focusing on other areas such as new products, new lending levels and a lack of property for First Time Buyers!!

 

Author: Michael Aglony