House prices expected to fall a further 10%

Published 19th Jan 2009

The average price of a house in England and Wales has fallen by nearly 8% over the past year and is likely to fall by a further 10% before reaching a bottom in the second half of this year, a report out today said. Rightmove, a property website, said prices dropped 1.9% in January to leave them standing at £213,570, compared with £217,808 in December.

"We forecast last month that prices were within 10% of the bottom of the market, so this substantial fall is consistent with the market bottoming-out in the latter part of 2009," said Rightmove.

The biggest monthly drop was in the West Midlands, where prices plummeted 6% in January alone and stand at £168,438. The East Midlands saw the only increase as the average price of a house rose by 0.4% to reach £156,576.

Average asking prices of new London sellers dropped by 1.3% or £5,068 this month to £386,653. However, the five most expensive London boroughs including Islington and the City of Westminster are still showing average asking prices higher than a year ago, with increases in initial marketing price of between 5.6% and 13.6%.

Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove, said: "One of the factors that will help to arrest price falls is a lack of property coming onto the market, resulting in lower inventory levels that align supply more closely with today's restricted demand."

Source: ' Guardian '

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