theRatandMouse - London's property blog

Hold onto something heavy, the Nationwide index, which has been in free-fall since October 2007 and is one of the bears' preferred measures (last month it showed house prices down 17.6% on the year), shows a rise in average house prices in March. It's a rise of 0.9%, and it leaves the annual house price index down 15.7%. So how's this happened? Reasons to be cheerful (if you believe it's sensible to be cheerful about stabilising house prices) include recent news of mortgage approvals picking up and a consensus that buyer interest is on the rise. Reasons to conclude this may turn out to be a blip include the fact that we're probably still in the early stages of an unemployment cycle... and nothing screws the property market like high unemployment. All eyes on the Halifax index, due to report soon.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The Nationwide "March" figures are for mid February to mid March, the previous "month's" figures were for mid January to mid February when most buyers would have been motivated by securing the lowest price in the depths of winter. "March" buyers are more likely to have been typical aspirational Spring buyers, hence the slight price rise achieved on offers.