Some good news. Or at least, the absence of more dreadful news.
UK house prices fell just 0.4 per cent in November, according to the latest numbers from Nationwide.
Which means that the year-on-year rate of fall has also come down. To 13.9 per cent from 14.6 per cent.
But naturally, one swallow does not a spring make. In fact, it would be a pretty depressing place to be had the decline in UK house prices not decelerated after the dramatic rate cut from the Bank of England earlier this month, which, after much umming and ahing, was mostly passed on by banks to consumers. There’s also been a stamp duty holiday. And the stamp duty threshold has been raised to £175,000.
The secular outlook is still bleak. House prices are not back at their long-term average real price yet, as the below graph shows, and given the expectation of decline overshoot, we’ve got several months of steep declines still to come.
Related link:
Fin-de-siecle UK house prices – FT Alphaville
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