There have been so many different organisations publishing data on UK house prices I though it would be good to capture a snapshot of what everyone is saying and then see what can be collectively concluded from the various reports. So here is a summary of headlines published in June 2009:
Housetrack – Reported that prices held steady in June, only 3% of postcodes saw prices fall.
Standard & Poor – Reported that house prices could continue falling into the forth quarter 2009.
Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) – Reported a 2% fall in lending for May 2009, but commented that this is partly due to a fall in the number of remortgages.
Nationwide – reported a 1.2% rise in house prices for May 2009.
Halifax – reported a 2.6% rise in house prices for May 2009.
Rightmove – reported a 0.4% fall in house asking prices for May 2009.
Land Registry – reported a 0.2% fall in house prices for May 2009. The Land Registry also state on their website that they provide “the most accurate independent house price index available”.
So, what can we conclude form all of this? Firstly there are widely conflicting reports on what is happening with house prices, there a several reasons for this. One is timing, e.g. are price changes recorded on purchase completion (Land Registry) or at some earlier point in the purchase process from advertiser asking price through to mortgage offered. Another factor is data volatility, as there are lower volumes of transactions then data from some sources may be more prone to error.
But perhaps the most interesting point is that we have moved from a point 6 months ago when everyone was reporting falls to today where we have mixed reports. This could well suggest we are getting close to the bottom of the market, although before getting too excited, beware of a possible ”second dip” in prices as we have yet to see the full effect of unemployment which is not expected until 2010.
Overall conclusion – we are getting near to the bottom of the market, when all of the data sources say prices are steady or increasing, we will be on the way up again … until the next change in the property cycle, but hopefully not for a few years! So if you need to sell your house fast then may be the market will soon turn in your favour.
