Friday May 2, 12:30 PM
More Bad News In Latest Homes Survey
By Sky News
The average home across the UK has lost more than £7,000 of its value in the past 12 months, according to the country's biggest mortgage lender. The annual rate of price growth turned negative during April for the first time since
February 1996, with the prices now 3.7% lower than they were 12 months ago, says Halifax.The figure was £189,027 last month - in April 2007 it was £196,262, representing a drop of £7,235. The downward trend in April saw the average cost of a home falling by 1.3% in that month alone. The latest gloomy data on the housing market comes just days after Nationwide Building Society said prices fell for the sixth month in a row during April, losing 1.1% of their value. There is likely to be worse to come, with figures from the Bank of England, also released this week, showing that the number of new mortgages approved for house purchase hit an all-time low during March of just 64,000. That was 44% fewer than during the same month of 2007. Halifax said the decline in prices was being driven by a squeeze on households' spending power, as well as the rapid rise in house prices during the past few years, both of which had curbed housing demand. It added that the interest rate rises seen between August 2006 and July 2007 had also increased average mortgage costs. At the same time, the housing market is coming under pressure from the credit crunch, with higher mortgage costs and lenders' more conservative lending strategy further limiting people's ability to get on to the property ladder or trade up.
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