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Severe dip in house prices
10 April 2008 11:32
Property prices decreased substantially last month, according to new figures, although there was considerable regional variation in price movements over the quarter as a whole.
House prices fell by 2.5 per cent from February to an average of £191,556 in March, Halifax's data showed, while prices were down by one per cent in the first quarter on the previous three months and the annual rate of growth slipped from 4.2 to 1.1 per cent.
There were, however, still price increases in several regions over the first quarter, of which the 2.2 per cent rise witnessed in the East Midlands was the largest, whereas the biggest drop in prices was a five per cent decline in the West Midlands.
Yet while Halifax's chief economist Martin Ellis forecast a mild price decrease for 2008 as a whole, he said it should be viewed in the context of sizeable long-term growth and pointed to the robustness of underlying fundamentals such as the employment situation.
However, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors warned that these figures highlight the impact that lower loan-to-value ratios and higher rates are having on the market and predicted that year-on-year price growth could soon turn negative.
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