House prices '8% down on last year'
The average property now costs just £169,000 in the UK - £15,000 less than it did last year.Nationwide said today that house prices have fallen by a further 1.7 per cent this month, bringing the annual drop to a record 8.1 per cent.This is the largest 12-month decline since the firm began its house price survey in 1991.Nine consecutive months of falls have now been marked by the lender, which blamed the credit crunch for the trend.However, recent reductions in mortgage costs were cited by Nationwide chief economist Fionnuala Earley as reasons to hope that the housing market would begin growing again."Overall the weakening economy and poor housing market sentiment do not suggest that the market will recover quickly," she said."As the cost of mortgages begins to come down, activity could be bolstered and restore some liquidity to the housing market," she added."However this is not expected to happen overnight."
Share this..
Related stories
Why should UK consumers suffer quantitative easing?
As the Bank of England sits on the verge of introducing one of the more radical economic policies available, i.e. quantitative easing, there are serious concerns that again UK consumers are set to foot the bill of the "mismanagement of the economy". In effect the imminent arrival of quantitative easing will see the Bank of England investing billions upon billions of pounds to acquire assets from t...
Read MoreRain dampens Morrisons sales
A rainy couple of months depressed sales at W Morrisons, the grocery chain has admitted.Morrisons said its sales growth had slipped since its May AGM, when it reported increased pre-tax profit of £374 million for 2006/07 compared to £54 million in the previous 12 months.The supermarket blamed tougher comparisons against last year's figures, when it said the market was doing well from good weathe...
Read MoreCameron predicts "tax bombshell"
Tax cuts planned by the government will create a "tax bombshell", the leader of the opposition has warned.David Cameron told the House of Commons that the expected cuts will require further borrowing, which will lead to larger taxes in the future.This would create a "borrowing bombshell which will soon become a tax bombshell", he said.He also criticised the prime minister for saying a "consensus"...
Read MoreSupermarket egg fraudster uncovered
Keith Owen, a former provider of free range eggs to the UK supermarket industry, has today been convicted of fraud and sentenced to jail. His crime was to sell eggs from his battery hens as free range, a fraud which took in the likes of Sainsbury's and Tesco. It is believed that the 44-year-old made profits in excess of £3 million over the two-year period in question and has been forced to surren...
Read MoreMP committee looks at North sea oil exploration
In light of the Gulf of Mexico disaster a committee of MPs will review the UK government's decision to ignore calls for a moratorium on new drilling exploration in the North sea. While there is no doubt that lessons need to be learned from the Gulf of Mexico problem, which has seen the BP share price collapse, many believe that safety measures in place in the North sea are more than adequate for t...
Read More