An unexpected rise of 0.8% in January house prices, reported by HBOS, has messed up the story a little. As always, though, it makes more sense to take the result in the context of the two months before, which knocked 2.4% off the index, so across the three months we're still 1.6% down across three months. Comparing those three months to the same last year, the index is 2.4% in the red, the most dramatic fall since October 2009.

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