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October 2019London House Prices Falling at Fastest Rate Since Financial Crash
Average property prices in London fell at their fastest quarterly rate in ten years over the last three months, according to Halifax.
The latest house price index from the Halifax has revealed that average house prices in the capital fell by 1.7% in the last quarter compared to Q3 2018. This is the sharpest annual drop in the house prices that London has seen since the autumn of 2009 when the global economy was in the grips of the financial crisis.
Average house prices also fell year-on-year in the South East of England and Eastern England, by 1.3% and 0.5% respectively. These latest three months mark the third quarter in a row that average house prices have been falling annually in the South East.
Across the whole country, average house prices during the last three months grew by just 1.5% compared to the previous year – the slowest annual growth since the beginning of 2013. This also followed on from a 1.5% annual drop in prices in the last quarter. Regionally, Wales performed the strongest over the previous quarter, recording higher than 6% annual rises in house prices for the third quarter in a row.
The average price of a home in the UK over the last three months was £233,808 according to the index, down from £234,026 over the previous quarter. However, over the quarter, house prices increased by 0.4% in the three months to the end of September, after a 0.4% drop in the three months to the end of June.
“The UK housing market remained fragile during the third quarter of the year and is on course to record its worst performance since 2012,” said Paul Smith, economics director at IHS Markit. “Despite the low mortgage rate environment and rising earnings growth helping to ease affordability constraints, UK-wide house price inflation sank to a six-and-a-half year low.
“Given the close relationship with wider macroeconomic trends in recent years, we suspect that political and economic uncertainty associated with Brexit continues to weigh on the market. This is especially the caser in the south of England, where prices are falling and, in the case of London, at the fastest rate since the height of the financial crisis.”