The Halifax house price index is out and it shows a moderate rise in values in January, of 0.6%. The three months to end of Jan (compared to the same period last year) show a weakening in house prices of 1.8%. Accompanying literature singles out better-than-expected employment data and low interest rates for supporting house prices. Download your own copy of the actual report here.

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According to Winkworth, there's no sign of London's top-end boom market ending soon, while wealthy Eurozone and Middle Eastern buyers continue to plough money in. Prices in Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Belgravia rose 17% in 2011, with 41% of those sales involving figures above £2m (up from 33% in 2010). London's safe haven status is behind the demand, and a shortage of available properties is pushing prices ever higher. More here.

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Nationwide's January data's out, and it shows a 0.2% fall in house prices, leaving the annual change down to just +0.6%, from +1%. The important three-month-on-three-month measure was up 0.3%. More here.

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The new figures show a fall of 1.3% in 2011, after zero change between November and December. The only region to see a rise in 2011 was - of course - London, where house prices rose 2.8%, which was modest and roughly half the level of general inflation. In the north east, prices fell 7.1%.

So, we have a winner, and damn if it isn't the much-mocked, much-maligned (but mainly by us, and for their very odd way of producing their monthly index) Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Yes, we've egg on our faces, but not as much as Citi group, who forecast house price gains of between 5% and 10%, At the bottom end of last year's forecasts, we've probably got to cut Capital Economics (-10%) and Armstrong Davis (-10% to -15%) some slack, for the way those London figures have skewed what would otherwise be a market that was falling faster. What did we predict? Gains of 2%. For another look at last year's forecasts, go here.

Congratulations, RICS. If there was a prize, you'd get it. But there isn't.

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According to Rightmove, the number of new properties appearing on the website each week is at a ten-year (actually, an all-time) low. Bizarrely, the number of searches are at an all time high, up 27% on a year ago, at 44 million searches in the first ten days of the year. Bizarrely again, and demonstrating exactly why it's important to get over the supply-demand theory of pricing when it comes to the UK property market, asking prices have fallen on the month. More here.

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It's all about the City.

Shehan Mohamed, a housing economist at thinktank the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), said: "City traders have tended to put their bonuses into property, either as an investment or via residential. There is now a dual effect. Bonuses are falling and jobs are going. Obviously job losses are more powerful as they put people in an untenable situation. Bonuses tended to be used as a down payment. Less bonuses mean less potential new buyers bidding up each property."

The organisation predicts insignificant growth of under 2%.

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According to Primelocation, property prices rose in every single borough (the first time in the index's history), adding to nine consecutive months of growth with a 3.4% rise, leaving London prices at a new high, 10% up on the year. More here.

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It's that time of year again. Just for your perusing pleasure, here's what the prediction table looked like this time last year.

We're not going to call time on 2011 for a while yet, as we prefer to wait until we get figures based on actual completions data. It is, however, fair to say that we don't expect we'll be handing ourselves the coveted Rat and Mouse trophy this year.

So... 2012. This is the most complete list we've been able to make. If you want to add anything, email us.

Assetz ↑3%
Rightmove ↑2%
Halifax ↑ or ↓2%
Nationwide NO CHANGE
National Association of Estate Agents NO CHANGE
Hamptons ↓2%
Savills ↓2%
Hometrack ↓3%
RICS ↓3%
The Rat and Mouse ↓5%
Knight Frank ↓5%
IHS Global Insight ↓5%
Capital Economics ↓5%
BDI Home Finders ↓6%
Jonathan Davis Wealth Management ↓7% to ↓10%
Henry Pryor ↓10%

Of course, regional variation is guaranteed, and most London agents seem confident that the capital's upward momentum isn't likely to falter in the next 12 months.

But the overall consensus is negative, and the reasons for this are hardly a mystery. Rising unemployment... pressure on banks due to the Eurozone crisis... pressure on pay... and a general sense that 2012 will be all about belt-tightening don't signal a year in which people will be buying unless they really have to.

Before I go, there is a group that's more bearish than Henry Pryor. It's a group of Guardian readers, who are being polled here. This is what they're saying at the time of writing.

So, it just remains to wish all our readers a very happy and prosperous new year. Thanks for sticking with us in 2011. We're looking to implement big changes in 2012, including a radical redesign and some guest writers. If you fancy contributing to the blog and/or you've ideas about what we should be covering or covering better, please drop me a line at the usual address.

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The survey was by Lloyds TSB, and its Borough (Kensington & Chelsea) dominates the top ten list. Campden Hill Square has an average property price of £4.9m... former home to Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser (and venue for the famous IRA bomb meant for her previous husband Conservative MP Hugh Fraser in 1975. Second came Merton's Parkside, with an average price of £4.8m, and Drayton Gardens was third with average prices of £4.4m.

The rise and rise of top-end London property... it appears unstoppable. New figures by Primelocation show "prime" London property up 10% in 2011. That's £306 a day.

[photograph by Peter Jordan]

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Average house prices are falling/static, depending on who you believe, but at the top of the two-tier market, it's all champagne, Ferrero Rochet and 27,000 new property millionaires in 2011. The figures come courtesy of Zoopla, who put the gains down to cash-rich buyers at the top of the market looking for somewhere to stash their cash and a shortage of suitable properties. More here.

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Up on the month (of October... they're always late) by 0.6%, down on the year by 0.4%. Regionally, London's still 3.9% in the black over 12 months, which is helping to skew the national picture. Take London and the south east out of the equation and the average fall October-to-October is 1.8%. Interestingly - and this one caught me by surprise - new-builds have done better over the year (+12.1%!)  than pre-owned dwellings (-1.2%), suggesting what? That surveyors have been conservative on new-build valuations? That developers have been keen to shift bricks-and-mortar? More here.

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Do with it what you will, but here's the November "truth" according to the Royal Institution of Surveyors:

Seven per cent more members reported increasing enquiries than decreasing, and 14% saw increasing sales over the previous month. However 17% more agents saw property prices retreating.

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Halifax reports a 0.9% drop for November, leaving the index down 1% on the year. The three-month to three-month number (largely considered more reliable) was down, too, for the second month in a row, at -0.6%.

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According to research by Halifax, older houses (built before 1919) have lost almost a third of their value since the 2007 peak of the market, suffering considerably more than houses built in any other period. Conversely, houses built after 1960 have weathered the storm with much more aplomb. It's surprising, because we've been led to believe the more mature a market, the more stable (hence the collapse in value of new-builds). Perhaps the data reflects the long-standing trend toward period property that saw older houses gain value much quicker during the boom years. More here.

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October figures by the Land Registry show prices down 0.9% on the month, leaving them down 3.2% on the year. London's still clinging obstinately to the black, up 0.3% on the year, but took a serious monthly hit, down 1.7%. More here.

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Hometrack report a 0.2% fall in November, leaving the index 2.3% down on the year. On its own, it's a statistically insignificant monthly move, but in the context of seven consecutive monthly falls it's another sign of an ailing UK property market. More here.

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The Centre for Economics and Business Research is predicting rising house prices in the coming years - 1.6% in 2012, 2.2% in 2013, 2.6% in 2014, 3.2% in 2015 and 4.2% in 2016 - as increasingly constricted supply results in competition for available property. Four and five years is a long time in economics. Very few, in 2004, saw 2008 coming.

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Nicely timed to coincide with the Government's latest initiative to help first-time buyers onto the property ladder with 95% loans, the Bank of England's own David Miles is quoted in the Telegraph suggesting house prices are unlikely to ever return to 2007 prices, and that renting might be the choice of the future. Don't shed a tear, though, he says, it might be the healthiest outcome for all of us. More here.

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Rightmove's monthly survey of asking prices shows a serious monthly fall of 3.1% - the biggest drop since December 2007 - with the number of new listings also way down, by 13%. Accompanying comment singles out the bad news coming out of the Eurozone, and blames it for potential vendors taking a wait-and-see approach and those forced to move now having to offer discounts. Download your own copy here.

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In London, the answer is £87k, according to the National Housing Federation. The average London home costs £408,384. £87,511 gets you a 75% mortgage. You'll need to find £100,000 for the deposit. Of course, that's treating the average house as a starter house... most people looking at this kind of property are trading up, with some equity already in bricks and mortar. Now, this isn't - for a single moment - the Rat and Mouse suggesting there's anything sane about those figures. Other insanity in the NHF report (entitled Home Truths):

• Only Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Newham and Waltham Forest have average properties that cost under a quarter of a million pounds.
• To even buy a property in the bottom 25% of values, buyers need an average salary of £46k.
• Private sector rents are up 30% on 2008 levels.
• The average price to earnings ratio in the London property market is 15:1. Unaffordable? I think it's safe to say that.

Download your own copy of the report here.

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In an interesting report by Savills published today, the agency forecasts

- house prices failing to keep up with inflation over the next five years.

- transactions to remain low.

- prime central London to continue to prosper as safe-haven.

- London as a whole, however, is forecast price falls in 2012, recovering however across the next five years.

- in the north, the pain looks like lingering.

Since September 2009, the three-month sterling Libor has almost doubled, and it’s been rising steadily since the beginning of September 2011, from 0.90% to 0.99%, lifting the all-important gap between inter-bank lending and the base rate to 49 basis points – 10 to 20 is considered normal. As a result, tracker rates from all the major lenders began climbing in October by significant amounts: Woolwich has pushed through increases of as much as 1.5%. According to many analysts, banks’ purse strings are likely to tighten further in the coming weeks, as a 2008-style credit crunch seems less and less fanciful.

Our publisher looks at how the Eurozone debt crisis is likely to affect the UK property market, in his guest column for Citywire.

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It's all about monthly volatility but a slow, long-term decline over at Halifax. The index is up 1.2% on the month, but down 0.3% over the quarter and down 1.8% over the year. Effectively, 2011 has brought about little change. However, bring inflation into the picture and house prices are faring a little worse. Get your own copy of the report here.

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Why - asks Merryn Somerset Webb - the assumption that the current slump in house prices will end in the next five, ten, even fifteen years? Look at Japan.

Japanese prices didn’t fall all at once. It was a long horrible drawn out process. Sure residential land prices ended up down, going on 70%. But they didn’t reach that point until 2005, over 20 years after I took my first job in Japan under the sadly mistaken impression that the crisis was all but over. So if it took that long in Japan for the bubble to be utterly purged, why might you think that asset price falls are over here?

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That's according to the Nationwide house price index, which is up 0.4% in October putting the annual move into the black (0.8%) for the first time in six months. The accompanying comment identifies a pattern emerging of activity rising in more wealthy areas (the ACORN system likes to call the residents "wealthy achievers") and a decrease in more deprived areas. The exception is "Urban Prosperity" (city-living professionals), who haven't been shifting houses as quickly as their posh mates. The classification system's hilarious, so we bring you this:

For more graphs and charts, get your own copy of the Nationwide report here.

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Now new signs are emerging that luxury property prices around the world are collectively softening for the first time since the global recession hit in 2008/09.

The headlines: 4.3% annual growth (September-to-September, measured in 21 major cities around the world by Knight Frank) is the lowest it's been since 2009. There's a new and interesting volatility, with major cities in single regions behaving very differently (Jakarta: +15.1%, Mumbai: -17.9%). But - most interesting of all - the rate of growth appears to be slowing right across the board, with 15 cities showing rising prices over 12 months, but only eight in the black across the last quarter. Reasons? Exactly what you'd expect. Sovereign debt across Europe and America, and a cooling of several hugely-over-heated Asian markets.

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The Hometrack index shows English and Welsh property prices falling down 0.2% on the month, after five months of 0.1% falls, leaving the index down 2.8% on the year. With supply up 11% over the last six months, the outlook - according to the accompanying comment - isn't good.

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Estate agents Knight Frank predict a 5% fall for UK house prices in 2012, the market's first annual fall since 2008, as the market is hit by wider economic concerns. And don't - they say - expect further growth until 2014. Falling prices will extend to London, where there'll be an overall drop of 3.7%. Prime central properties, however, will continue partying, with a 5% rise.

That's homefinder Tracy Kellett's message to vendors.

Here is your two-week warning: if you don't do something very fast – a price reduction, or taking that offer you think is too low – you will be whistling until February at the earliest, and I guarantee now that you will be getting a lower price than any offer on the table today.

But Tracy, what do you really think?

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According to Henry Pryor, we're about to witness the emptying of ashtrays and the mopping up of sick:

As one or two guests try to get a last drink the proverbial fat lady is attempting karaoke. She is singing about yields, the only scientific guide to value when it comes to house prices. Determining the yield from the rent one might expect to get for the purchase price you are invited to pay enables City types to compare property as an investment class along with other commodities like stocks and shares, fine art or indeed wine. Because the transaction costs are high (e.g. stamp duty over 5% for homes over £1m), the fact that property is ‘illiquid’ (taking 92 days on average to sell) and that there are costs associated with keeping a property let at a decent rent has historically commanded a yield of 6%+ for most savvy investors. In central London today buyers seem content with 4% gross returns. They justify this by arguing that they are expecting capital growth but this is a spurious argument usually advanced by selling agents and developers. Who would be content with nil dividend from a share in return for the hope of a rising price?

It's a good piece and worth reading.

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October's Rightmove asking price index is a bit of a shocker. Average asking prices rose, and by 2.8% in the month, leaving them 1.2% above where they were in October 2010. So what the heck's happening? This (blue = asking prices in the north, red = in the south):

Look how close together they were in January 2007. What's happened since? There's been a southern recovery. Drilling down into today's figures a little further you find asking prices in the south rising a massive 4.7% on the month, while they fell 0.7% in the north. According to the report, this is all indicative of the long forecast effect of public sector job cuts. Get your own copy here.

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House prices are down 0.3% August to September, the first fall in three months, according to Acadametrics/LSL Property Services, leaving prices down 2.3% on the year. Every region except London showed a decline in the three-month average (when compared year-on-year). In London, prices are still up 1.1%. Interestingly, the number of transactions was higher than they'd expected, unchanged from August. Accompanying comment is about further restrictions in lending, as the banking sector tries to deal with current stormy conditions.

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Capital Economics has a history of grabbing the headlines with catastrophic house price crash predictions. So it's with mild surprise that we read it's latest forecast...

Capital Economics predicts that house prices will decline by 5% in both 2012 and 2013.

Come from CE, that's almost a "buy".

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More agents/surveyors saw falls than rises in house prices, but not as many more as analysts were predicting. New buyer enquiries were up a tiny bit, but the most interest data aspect of the latest RICS report is that September saw the first decline in sales since January (with the average number of properties on agents' books rising by 3% to 68.9). RICS' expectations are for house prices to continue to fall for the next quarter.

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Buying into new build is as risky as ever, but there are places, according to new research by Knight Frank, where you stand a greater than average chance of making a return on your investment. Nine Elms, in Wandsworth, is forecast growth of as much as 140%, as the area gets set for the opening of the new US embassy in 2017. Go here for a fun and effective interactive map.

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The big one, in many people's eyes... the HBOS index shows a monthly fall of 0.5%, a quarterly rise of 0.1%, leaving the annual change -2.3%. Accompanying comment:

Greater uncertainty about economic and personal financial circumstances, together with pressure on householders' finances from weak earnings growth, higher inflation and increases in taxes, are likely to be constraining housing demand. Despite these pressures, low interest rates and a rise in employment over the past year, have been supporting the market, resulting in broad stability in both prices and activity. We expect little change over the remainder of this year.

Pick up your very own copy of the report here.

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The 15th consecutive monthly fall from the Hometrack index, down 0.1% on the month, and 2.6% on the year. London - again - was the exception, with a 0.2% rise. More here.

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There was a mildly interesting piece on Friday over at FullFact.org ("promoting accuracy in public debate"), looking at the range of spin the different newspapers are able to give to house price data... a subject the Rat and Mouse has regularly picked up on over the last few years. How, they ask, is something like this possible?

The answer, of course, was that they were not only using different data (not so significant) but that they were talking about different time frames. Obvious - you'd think - but clearly not obvious enough to sell newspapers. Read it here.

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Prices fell 0.3% in August, following a 1.3% rise in July. Annually, prices are in the red by 2.6%. You won't be surprised to learn that the figures are highly regional. In Wales, prices are down 5.5% on the year. In London, prices are up 2.1% across the 12 months. Get the official release here.

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A plethora of commentators line up to sell property as the long term investment in the Express, following data showing the different price rises for both different regions and different property types over a decade.

Owners of terraced houses have seen the biggest increase in the value of their property, recording a 68.4 per cent rise over the past ­decade, which works out at £118 a week.

The typical price of a ­terraced home has soared from £89,843 in 2001 to £151,332 now, according to Britain’s biggest mortgage lender. Bungalows recorded the second biggest rise at 67.9 per cent, followed by semi-detached properties with a 62 per cent increase, according to the Halifax.

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1) Interest rate rises 2) restricted lending 3) increased building 4) reduced immigration. The first two, of course, go without saying. The third rests on a supply/demand view of the housing market that I always thought Money Week had a more sophisticated and sceptical view on. The fourth? Is it so significant? Unless they're referring to the foreign money propping up the fragrant end of the London market. Read it here.

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Billionaires’ homes in London now change hands for an average of more than £3,000 per square foot and our capital has the fourth most expensive house prices in the world, according to new analysis by international estate agents Savills.

According to Savills, the UK's safe-haven status continues to attract big money from the East, although the biggest property price rises over the last few years were still in the developing economies of Russia, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong.

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The Telegraph is making much of Primelocation research showing 41 towns with a higher proportion of properties valued at £1m or above than London. Leading the way is Beaconsfield (47%), followed by Virginia Water (44%). The article uses the research to rubbish the LibDem mansion tax proposals. It looks like a bit of opportunism timed to coincide with the conference, though, since this is fairly old data. What also isn't clear is whether the data set is simply made up of properties currently for sale, which would tell us very little given current levels of supply. It is interesting, however, to notice how the top slots are all taken by commuter towns, contradicting - for what it's worth - this recent report courtesy of the Halifax. For better reasons to rubbish a mansion tax, go here.

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Asking prices are - inexplicably - on the rise, according to Rightmove. They're up 0.7% on the month and 1.5% on the year, despite consistently gloomy, sometimes apocalyptic, economic forecasts from every corner. However, accompanying commentary from Rightmove warns:

Christmas is 98 days away but average time on the market is 94 days, so buyers and sellers need to get serious now if they are to tie up a deal before the festive season.

It also points out that first-time buyer Stamp Duty relief ends on March 2012. To read the actual report, go here.

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Most significantly, transactions are down to a 26 month low and levels not seen since the days of 2009's recession. Price expectations fell, too. The general message from RICS? A lack of confidence and a lack of lending mean the market's likely to get worse before it gets better.

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Prices are down 1.2% on the month, following three months of small rises, leaving them 2.6% in the red over 12 months. The quarterly change, however, is positive, at 1%. HBOS's Martin Ellis points to low transaction levels as a reason for the volatility, and prefers to use the quarterly figure as a measure... in other words, house prices are rising. Download the report, here.

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It's a monthly house price fall of 0.6% in August, leaving prices down 0.4% on the year. That's the first fall since April, but the overall picture is one of stability. The only monthly changes exceeding 1% in the last two years came in April 2010 (+1.2%) and August 2009 (+1.8%). Download the release in pdf format here.

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The NHF's chief executive has described the UK property market as, like,  "totally dysfunction"... high prices, strict lending criteria, too little social housing, too little building. As a result, home ownership - the NHF predicts - will start falling dramatically, down to 63.8% in 2021 (from a 2001 peak of 72.5%). Less than half of Londoners will be homeowners by 2012, with the number falling to 44% by 2021. The NHF also predicts massive housing related inflation... inflated house prices (due to a shortage of property), inflated rents, inflated waiting lists for social housing .The answer? Build, they say.

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House prices rose 1.3% in July, according to the latest Land Registry figures, leaving them 2.15% down on their July 2010 position. The South West did best (+2.2%), and the North East the worst (-2.3%, -8.8% on the year). London remains the only region up on the year (1.3%). Low transaction levels remain, with vendors and lenders both nervous.

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Some new statistics today. According to a Post Office survey (probably conducted by asking people in those long, snaking queues), 53% of would-be house buyers have given up hope. They don't think they'll ever be able to afford a home. Those who do think they'll buy a property see 35 as the age at which it is now a reasonable expectation to buy. The equivalent in the early 1960s? Twenty-three. More here.

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That's what's cheering them up at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, anyway. They've just revised their 2011 house price forecast from -1.4% to +1.3%, quoting the above factors, and longterm they're forecasting a 14% rise over the next four years, bringing house prices to a new all-time high (although factoring in inflation rather rains on the parade). More here.

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Asking prices in London have dropped 3.4% July-to-August. Nationally, the figure was 2.1%. Accompanying commentary blamed global economic uncertainty; with continuing Euro-debt problems making further falls likely. Year-on-year, national asking prices were down 0.3%, in the red for the first time since September 2009. In London, they're still in the black, up 3.2%.

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The Acadametrics/LSL Property Services index (a special sauce index combining Land Registry data with data extracted from other indices to forecast what a complete Land Registry England and Wales index would look like... except sooner) shows house prices down 0.1% in June, 2.6% on the year, leaving them at their lowest level in 19 months. An accompanying commentary blames restricted lending and the effect of inflation on wages, and doesn't foresee a more confident market any time soon. Interestingly, take London out of the equation, and house prices are down 0.2% on the month, 3.3% on the year. Go here for the relevant pages.

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Nothing to do with a riot... Zoopla's newly updated heat maps are available, illustrating average property price hotspots. Informative and addictive.

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Remember that it costs nothing to put your house on the market so an ambitious asking price costs you nothing - directly. There are over 850,000 today and last month, according to HMRC just 73,000 sold across the UK. Sellers by nature are optimistic - they only have a 6% chance of finding a buyer in the first month and at present only a 30% chance of selling if they leave their house on the market for a year!

It’s the same with indices from lenders like Halifax & Nationwide. Their monthly report is based on the mortgage advances they have made. The biggest is the Halifax and they have a 20% market share. With around 40% of the few sales that are happening at present ‘cash’ deals (ie. with no mortgage involved) the mighty Halifax survey is sometimes based on fewer than 7,000 sales across the whole country!

And excellent piece by market commentator Henry Pryor looks at some of the short-comings of the popular indices, and suggests a cleverer way of working out what a house might be "worth".

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According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors UK homeowners are £250bn poorer in property equity since the credit crunch hit. The general message from RICS' latest tortured and confusing survey seems to be that prices are still falling... gently. Low interest rates, however, and fewer redundancies are saving homeowners from the kind of negative equity-fueled misery seen in previous property slumps.

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Their latest Outlook for UK House Prices gives only a 12% chance of residential property prices returning to 2007 levels by 2015, with only a 53% chance by 2020. More here.

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There were 85,104 property price cuts just last month, according to Home.co.uk, 15% more than during June 2010. The average time to sell a property? One hundred and thirteen. More here.

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The Government's own index - late, but based on real transaction figures - shows prices down by 0.5% in May, leaving them down 1.6% over the year. Interestingly, new properties seemed to do better than "pre-owned", rising 7.8% over 12 months. Download your own copy, here.

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Acadametrics and LSL Property Services produce an index based on Land Registry data (hence the delay) and other sources into a proprietary magic number, which they then publish. This month... property prices fall again (the third consecutive month), by 0.8% (in London, -1.4%) from May to June, leaving the index down 1.4% on the year and at its lowest point in 18 months. Transactions were up. Accompanying comment blames inflation and higher taxes.

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In the States, the Huffington Post has a reputation for digging deeper and rewarding readers with a reveal they won't find elsewhere. This - on house prices - isn't a great start for the UK version. Yes, the newspapers largely take a one-sided view of house prices; no, wildly inflating property prices that leave wages behind are not a good thing; yes, it's an iniquitous situation for a generation of first-time buyers. But to suggest these aren't issues most intelligent readers haven't already considered is patronising, and to suggest business/the economy would profit from a "crash" - hurling countless hard-working young families like the author's own into negative equity; leaving older people unable to cash in and pay for care/their old age - is silly. Nobody profits from a "crash". Except the author, perhaps.

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Nationwide's latest index shows a modest 1.1% fall in house prices June-to-June. On the month, there was no change at all. The accompanying commentary is all about low demand, improved employment figures doing little to encourage people to buy houses, and just low interest rates and low levels of building supporting prices.

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On the face of it, not so good. House prices down 0.1% in June, pushing them the furthest into the red on a year-to-year basis (at -3.9%) than they've been since October 2009. But...

Hometrack's director of research, Richard Donnell, said that the property market had been less weak so far this year than he had expected. "Low transaction volumes, low mortgage rates and forbearance by lenders limiting the number of forced sales have all played their part. While average prices have slipped back by 1 percent, sales volumes have increased off the back of higher demand and greater realism over achievable prices," he said.

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According to research by Zoopla, 80% of properties purchased since 2006 (that's some 3.5 million homes) are worth less than their purchase price. The north east appears to be the worst affected. And - as one might expect - London's been relatively resilient, but there are still 46% of London homes under water.

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The Rightmove asking price index is up for the sixth consecutive month and by 0.6%. Remarkably, that leaves asking prices up 8.1% on the 12 months. More here. Nobody's expecting this to continue.

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The cost of renting a typical first-time buyer property is 9.7 per cent more than buying a similar home, based on an interest-only mortgage charging a rate of five per cent, according to property website Zoopla.co.uk.

The disparity is at its highest in Milton Keynes, where it's 43% more expensive to rent, followed by Birmingham (37%). In London? It's 16% more expensive to rent.

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It's the Government's own index, lagging but accurate, and dating back to April. The month shows a 1.1% fall, leaving the annual figure down 0.3%. Interestingly, most of the losses were outside England (where prices remain steady over 12 months). In Scotland, they're down 1.2%, in Wales, they're down 1.4% and in Northern Ireland they're down an enormous 15.2%. Read the actual report in PDF format by clicking this.

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But nothing substantial... a monthly rise in residential property prices of 0.1% (following a fall of 1.4% in April), bringing the quarterly change to -1.2%, and leaving the annual figure in the red at -4.2%. Download a PDF of the report by clicking this.

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The U.K.'s housing bubble put the U.S.'s in the shade. At their peak, U.K. house prices were at around 5.8 times average earnings, against a normal ratio outside of bubbles of around 3.4 times. They're currently around 4.4 times. By contrast, the U.S.'s ratio of house prices to median income peaked at around 4.8 times, against a trend rate, like the U.K.'s, of around 3.4 times.

Indeed, the U.K. property bubble was more akin to that seen in Japan in the late 1980s. This is a comparison to chill British homeowners' blood, because Japanese property prices have slid for the best part of 20 years.

According to WSJ's Alen Mattich, it's only a matter of time - with international money, which has supported the London market, slowing, taxes rising, and the prospects of rising interest rates - before the UK market is hit by a property bust that could take decades to reverse.

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Apparently, a Morgan Stanley research note to clients went out this morning predicting a 10% fall in the value of residential property by the end of 2012. The prediction is based on a sharp rise in interest rates. Banks (and their vulnerability to falling asset values) are a concern, and the note singles out Lloyds as particularly vulnerable.

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Zoopla's 2011 Property Rich List reveals almost 6,000 streets where the average value of a home is in excess of £1m. London - obviously - had the most, with 2,290, followed by Guildford and Cobham. The UK's most expensive? Kensington, where homes cost an average of £1.75m, almost half a million more than its closest rival, Chelsea. More of this nonsense, here.

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We posted earlier about the Centre for Economic and Business Research's headline grabbing 16% house price rise prediction. But former MPC member David Blanchflower's unimpressed, telling the British Property Federation to expect house price falls of between 10% and 15% before we reach the bottom. More here.

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It's by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and it's made a Daily Express front page.

The details? A chronic and ongoing shortage of available property and a recovery in the position of the banks which will lead to much looser lending conditions will add 4% a year to the value of the average home every year from 2011 to 2015. More here. But where will be inflation be during this period? (It certainly doesn't suggest any radical increase in interest rates.) If these figures aren't adjusted for inflation, this headline-grabbing story might mean little more than house prices in some parts of the country just about beating inflation, while in other parts they don't.

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According to Nationwide, prices rose 0.3% in May, leaving them 1.2% down on the year. Frankly, with volume so low, the value of the figures is debatable, other than for excluding a dramatic recovery or dramatic rout. Some commentary here. Read the Nationwide's actual release by clicking this.

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Department for Communities and Local Government figures show house prices rising in March, up 1.2% on the month, down 0.5% in a quarter-on-quarter comparison, and up 0.9% compared to March 2010. The rise follows an equivalent fall in January and zero change in February. The overall picture? A static market with suppressed transaction levels.

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Average asking prices were up 1.3% in May, 0.7% on the year. Among new sellers, the asking prices reached a three year high, their highest level since June 2008. Meanwhile, this year's festival of bank holidays has resulted in substantially fewer properties coming onto the market, perhaps helping prop up prices (although average unsold stock still managed to rise slightly). Download the actual report in pdf form by clicking this.

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The heavy end of the London market continues to obey its own rules. Values rose 1% in April, leaving them up 8.3% (or £767 every day) on the year. Mayfair, Marylebone, St John's Wood and Kensington lead the way with double-digit growth over 12 months.

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• 18% more agents recognised a rise in new instructions, as supply increases
• 21% more agents recognised falls in house prices... strangely, the lowest number since June 2010
• 11% more agents expected the rate of transactions to rise
• the number of sales per agent rose in the three months to the end of April

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The HBOS house price report shows property values falling at their fastest rate in 18 months, down 1.4% on the month, leaving the three-month to three-month average down 3.7% annually. Prices are at their lowest since July 2009, and the annual decline is more than at any time since October 2009. Prices are now 20% below their 2007 peak.

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The newspaper picks up on research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which predicts five years of falling prices (after inflation...which is high) with the wider economy suffering as a result (although the report's assumption that the correlation between rising house prices and consumer spending is chicken-egg, rather than egg-chicken, is simplistic).  The NIESR's predictions are for "real" (after inflation) house price falls of 4.5% this year, and an average of 1.5% for the following four years. More here.

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A 0.2% fall in April, leaving the annual figure down 1.3%. Nationwide point out that the index has risen in three and fall in three of the last six months.  The message? Move right along, nothing to see here. Nationwide doesn't expect any significant movement either way through the rest of the year. Download your very own copy of Nationwide's actual press release (including charts) by click this.

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According to Rightmove, sellers have been jacking asking prices for four straight months, leaving the average England/Wales asking prices 6% higher than at the start of the year. Mad? Even Rightmove think so, describing optimism as "misplaced". Unsold property is also on the rise, reaching the highest number of properties per estate agent branch (74) since May 2007. Rightmove's advice: price more keenly to pick up on the spring season, and don't get stuck before winter/autumn, when interest rates/cuts are likely to kick into the market.

Connells claims "sustained recovery" in residential property market [14 April, 2011]

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Government figures show house prices rising 0.3% in February, leaving them 0.7% up on the year. Quarterly, prices were falling (-0.3%), but not as quickly as in the quarter to January (-0.7%). Interestingly, main gains were made on new houses (up 12.5% on the year) compared to "pre-owned" (up 0.1%). You can download the actual report by clicking here.

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We all know there's not much science to the RICS survey, but it does confirm the consensus that prices are falling (although fewer agents reported a fall in March than in February). In accompanying literature, their spokesman remarks that recovery is probably "still some way off".

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The latest Academetrics/LSL Property Services survey - an estimate drawn from the most recent Land Registry data available and combined with other sources  - shows house prices falling 0.1% in March, leaving values unchanged on the year. The national data, however, conceals significant falls in the regions, and a market that's still growing in London, where prices rose 3.7% in the last three months compared to the same period in 2010. Accompanying literature points to weakening demand outside the capital.

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This time it's the Halifax index, up 0.1% in March, a marginal rise but not the fall most of us were expecting. It leaves the annual rate of change at -2.9%. Over the first three months prices fell 0.6% compared to the previous quarter. If that 0.6% figure looks familiar, it's the negative version of rival index Nationwide's own +0.6% quarterly figures. Hmm.

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The Nationwide house price index rose 0.5% in March. This leaves house prices up 0.1% on the year, and the three-month on three-month up 0.6%. It's a vision of market activity that sits oddly alongside both sentiment and other measures, so don't get too excited.

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It was a fall of 0.8% in February, leaving the annual change -1.7%. In London, however, things looked different, with house prices still 3.2% above where they were in February 2010. The biggest losers were in the north east, where house prices are down 7.1% on a year ago, a slightly chilling sign of what might be to come once social sector job losses start to kick in. More here. Download the actual report here.

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According to Rightmove, UK vendors raised property asking prices by 0.8% in March, although - oddly, considering recent high-profile claims of a top-end London market in overdrive - London prices fell 1.5%, with Kensington & Chelsea leading the slump with prices falling 5%. More here.

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DCLG figures show house prices falling 1.4% in January, leaving the annual figure still in the black, but only just at 0.5%. That annual rate has been dropping for eight consecutive months now. The three month average - which the boffins prefer - shows a 0.4% drop in the three months to January compared to the same period last year.

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The number of new mortgages fell by 29% in January, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. The figure was also 12% down on the same period 2010. Everyone's used to poor lending figures, but the scale of the decline, from a low base, has surprised many. The CML blame... well, just about everything... from spending cuts to uncertainty about the market to bad weather. The figures don't bode well for house prices.

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The Halifax index shows house prices 0.9% down on the month, 0.4% down on the quarter and 2.8% in the red across 12 months. What does it all mean? Prices are falling again, but not the way they were falling two and half years ago. February's 0.9% drop has to be balanced against January's 0.8% gain (there's nothing magical about a month as a way of measuring time and a market). Interesting, the accompanying bumph mentions tight supply supporting prices ("The decline in properties coming onto the market continues"), which is in direct contrast to yesterday's Hometrack assertions. Download the Halifax report as a PDF by clicking here.

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Although house prices fell just 0.2% in February, according to Hometrack, it left the annual change at -2.7%, the biggest year-on-year fall since November 2009. More interesting, though, and a big surprise if the data sample turns out to be leading the crunchers in the right direction, is a pick up in activity... a 7.5% increase in property available, a 14.7% increase in buyers registering and a 25.4% increase in sales agreed. More here.

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Quick-off-the-mark, Nationwide report a rise of 0.3% in their house price index between January and February, leaving the February 2010 to February 2011 figure down just 0.1%. It's a market - according to the commentary - "treading water", waiting, effectively, for clarification from the wider economy/labour market. Interestingly, on the whole chicken-and-egg subject of whether the economy follows house prices or house prices follow the economy, Nationwide's Robert Gardner appears to have taken a stand: "Given that the recovery hit a soft patch at the turn of the year and looks set to remain sluggish in the year ahead, the property market is likely to follow suit, with relatively low transaction levels and prices moving sideways or modestly lower through 2011." A few years ago, it seems, there was more debate.

Also intereest, Nationwide admits it's "revised" some of its index figures published between October 2010 and January 2011, although only by a small amount... enough, however, to have created some confusion. According to the survey, prices rose between January and February by 0.3%, however the average prices of a property fell, from £161,211 to £161,183. See below:

Download the repot as a pdf by clicking this.

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According to Rightmove, vendors won't budge on price, despite all common sense,  economic outlook and poor lending conditions, and the result is likely to be an alarmingly painful constipation in the UK property market. More here.

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We've already had Land Registry figures, now the equally-respected, completion figures courtesy of the Government. It was a rise of 0.5% for December, leaving house prices up 3.8% on the year. The final quarter of the year, however, showed a slight fall, of 0.4%.

Land Registry data in, shall we call time on 2010? Who wins? [January 31, 2011]

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Don't be surprised, says Marsh & Parson's Peter Rollings, by London's latest historic residential property highs.

London you see is unlike any other market in the UK and the commentators who lump it in to the wider 'UK property market' do so at their peril. The latest figures from Land Registry (which I have advocated for a long time are the only ones worth looking at), bear out what I am saying with the best and most popular parts of our capital showing the highest gains.The only surprise in my mind is why others are so surprised.

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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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The 'Equity Support Scheme', a mortgage disguised as a self-help group, is a product aimed at existing (Lloyds Group) borrowers in negative equity who need to move. It makes their mortgage portable, by allowing them to use any savings they might have (and so immediately disqualifying 43% of them according to Lloyds’ own data) to meet a 5% deposit requirement on the new property, and to move their negative equity (up to 25% of the value of the new property) over. In other words… it’s potentially a 120% mortgage.

Our publisher looks at Lloyds' new negative equity mortgage and asks what its launch implies about the medium-term future of the market, in his guest column for Citywire.

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An interesting chat, between Nationwide's chief economist and Bloomberg's Maryam Nemazoo, here.

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It's a drop, less than expected, but a drop nonetheless of 0.1%. It leaves the average house price down 1.1% on the year.

Land Register data in, shall we call time on 2010? Who wins? [January 31, 2011]
Market report - Hometrack [January 27, 2011]

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According to Land Registry data - as decent a way of measuring real house price movements as any - property prices ended the year 1.5% up, having fallen for the seventh successive month in December by 0.2%. As I said, the LR data's good, but it's only as good as national data covering low volume across a regionally variable market can be. So, in London, prices were up 6.2% across the year, while in the north east they dropped 3.3%. For the purposes of the 2010 predictions, we're interested in a national average. Here's what the predictions looked like:

So it's with some pride and a little embarrassment that the Rat and Mouse announces this year's winner is... the Rat and Mouse. We pretty much nailed it, with Zoopla a close second. The drinks are on you.

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The seventh consecutive monthly fall - according to housing data trackers Hometrack - taking the value of the average property down 0.5% in January, and 2.2% down on the year. The survey takes into account data from more than 5,000 agents, and also measures demand, which they say is down a dramatic 26% over the last six months, and 9.5% in January alone. Dodgy economic data, the fear of unemployment, the effects of inflation, concerns about rising interest rates... they're putting people off property.

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According to data from the National Housing Federation's Home Truths survey:

The five most expensive (the first figure's the average price, the second's the average property price as a multiple of the average salary):

1. Kensington & Chelsea £1,036,158 and 24.6
2. Westminster £736,691 and 21.0
3. Camden £601,094 and 18.7
4. Hammersmith & Fulham £553,381 and 18.3
5. Richmond-upon-Thames £509,330 and 15.7

And the five least expensive:

1. Barking & Dagenham £167,053 and 7.2
2. Bexley £209,495 and 8.3
3. Waltham Forest £220,300 and 8.9
4. Havering £224,545 and 8.9
5. Croydon £234,332 and 9.1

The boroughs are positioned roughly where you'd expect. Interesting, though, that even the bargain boroughs have average house prices seven times the average salary and above.

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Government figures... but November's. We'll have to wait a month before we can call time on the 2010 market and see who's prediction won out. For November, though... a 0.1% fall, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 4%. Over the quarter to November, prices were 0.6% down.

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Rightmove records the first monthly rise in asking prices in three months, up 0.3% in January, after 3% and 3.2% falls in December and November. New Year optimism? A little correction after two significant falls? Shortage of supply? Take your pick.

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Okay, a lot will be made of this... HBOS's final house price report of 2010... but - as is our tradition - the Rat and Mouse won't declare bets off until the fat lady of completions data sings. And we'll have to wait for that. In the meantime, HBOS reports prices down 1.3% in December (a quickening after its 0.2% November drop), leaving the October-December 2010 average down 1.6% on its 2009 equivalent. December-to-December, the index was 3.4% in the red.

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It's come around quickly, the annual post in which I gather together what the (so-called) experts think property prices will do in the next 12 months. As is the custom, I don't like to call time on the 2010 predictions until the official Government figures (which use proper completion data, rather than extrapolations from house prices or mortgage lending); although, with transaction levels so low, even completions-derived data comes with limitations right now.

Just for your interest, this is what the chart looked like last year.

From a predicted rise in prices of 10% to a predicted fall of 15%, there wasn't much in the way of consensus. This year, it's like this:

CEBR ↑2.2%
John Charcol ↑2%
Halifax NO CHANGE
Nationwide NO CHANGE 
Cluttons ↓0.1%
RICS ↓2%
Hometrack ↓2%
The Rat and Mouse ↓3%
Savills ↓3%
Hamptons ↓4%
Carter Jonas ↓5% 
Acadametrics/LSL Property Services ↓5%
Rightmove ↓5% 
Knight Frank ↓6%
IHS Global Insight ↓7%
Capital Economics ↓10%
Armstrong Davis ↓10%

Council of Mortgage Lenders "Flat or a small fall"

Generally... a sense of gloom, if not disaster. It's hard to imagine prices not sliding a little, if the Coalition's economic policies hit employment and repossessions start to rise. And yet... as long as the MPC continues to read current inflation as a temporary blip and doesn't respond by pushing interest rates too hard... it's likely to remain volume, rather than property prices, that will really suffer. On that basis, I've predicted a small dip.

Now, it just remains for me and my co-Rat and Mouser, Henry, to wish all our readers a Happy New Year. Thanks for sticking with us. It's genuinely appreciated. And don't forget to write in with ideas, arguments, suggestions, tips... there's nothing we'd like more than to see the Rat and Mouse become something more like a community next year. But we can't do that without your help.

Happy 2011. x

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Data from Rightmove show the average asking price down 3% over the last month, and up just 0.4% on the year. One would expect a fall at this time of year (Rightmove's figures aren't seasonally adjusted), and the dataset is low in the current sluggish market, but the move is inline with other reports from Halifax and the Land Registry, suggesting the house prices entering a nervous period.

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The slide continues, with house prices down 0.1% in November, and - annually - the market now in the red, down 0.7%. The three-month on three-month figure, generally taken more seriously, shows a dramatic decline of 2.1%.

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MoneyWeek claims to have had more reader comments on the subject of the relative values of precious metals and property than any other. Here they go again...

Did you know that if you had sold your average British house in late 2004 and bought silver – just regular bars of silver – you could now sell that silver and buy 5.5 average British houses?

MoneyWeek continues bullish on metal, bearish on property.

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The Land Registry's collated its October data and reveals a 0.8% slip in prices in October. It's pretty much what analysts expected. It's also highly regional. In London, prices actually rose, by 0.3%. Annually, it leaves the average English and Welsh home worth 3.4% more, or 7.6% more in London.

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Today's Nationwide report reveals the index down 0.3% October to November, pulling prices back to February levels, with the annual rate of inflation dropping to just 0.4%, the lowest that figure's been since September 2009. Accompanying literature points to greater supply as the main reason for the gently sliding market.

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More than two-thirds of 30 analysts polled by Reuters in the past week predicted a house price double dip, with the median predicted fall 5%. Restricted lending, higher unemployment are inevitably going to stifle markets, according to those polled. More here.

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Government figures show a fall of 0.7% in the three months to September, following a rise of 1.6% in the preceding three months. It appears to be September that did the damage, with a 0.8% fall in the month alone. September-to-September, house prices are still in the black, by 6.1% (down from 8.1%).

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Topped by Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, France and Spain, the UK slips to sixth in the Economist's over-priced homes league. Bargains include Japan and Germany, while the US appears to have reached something like parity.

[via arabianmoney]

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All the usual provisos... this is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors report and there's nothing scientific about asking a few estate agents to lick their fingers and stick them in the air... but here it is: Pessimism rules, new enquiries dropped for a fifth consecutive month, and price expectations worsened (the % number of agents expecting falls compared to rises) for a fifth consecutive month, too. More here.

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A report released today by Savills predicts a long wait until house prices return to the peaks seen in 2007. It also predicts a highly "tiered" market, in which luxury or one-off homes are likely to perform very differently to, say, properties in areas highly reliant on public sector jobs, or areas with higher reliance on mortgages and so greater sensitivity to interest rates. The prospects for Prime London (although the report suggests that very term may soon belong to the past, as a "new model for evaluating UK residential property" may be necessary, remain strong. Read the actual report here.

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Halifax are claiming a 1.8% rise in house prices during what most people agreed was a dreary October. A few days ago, Nationwide's October survey showed a fall of 0.7%. I'd argue that apparently volatile indices and disagreements between measures can be read as a sign of a market on the turn (we've seen this before). The (much more meaningful) three-month average measure by HBOS is down 1.2%. Month-on-month, the annual change is a rise of 1.2%. If you fancy by-passing the press and going straight to the Halifax page they're getting their own information from, click this.

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It's Hometrack, this morning, and the largest monthly fall in their index since January 2009... 0.9% in October, the fourth consecutive month in a downward direction. Accompanying comment points to conventional supply-and-demand issues. More here.

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Nationwide report a 0.7% fall in house prices in October. Over three months - generally considered a more significant view - house prices are down 1.5%, the furthest that number's been in the red since April 2009 (remember, though, that Nationwide were talking about -5% to -6% during the second half of 2008). The annual inflation rate now stands at just 1.4%. The Nationwide report projects the current rate of decline and works out that, if it continues, annual house price growth will drop to zero, perhaps into the minus numbers, by the end of the year. Get the actual report here.

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According to a Halifax report based on Land Registry data, the number of properties changing hands for more than £1m has doubled in the past year. Nine out of ten of the 3,000 properties were in London, amounting to 4.5% of London's transactions. More here.

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From Ernst & Young's Item Club: a fall of 5% for house prices through this year and 2011, followed by a slow recovery from 2012 . And - since it's Spending Review day - why not throw in a bit more gloom?

Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to the Club, said that regardless of spending cuts being announced later today, " the health of the financial system and its ability to support the recovery still remains in doubt".

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On the brink of a historically vicious spending review almost certain to hit employment, with talks - again - of recession, with the major indices agreeing we've seen the best of house prices for a while, and credit restrictions likely to worsen as banks are spooked by economic uncertainty and new rules redefine "sensible" lending... vendors have pushed up their asking prices by 3.1% in a single month, according to the latest Rightmove figures. Looking at London alone, the figure's more extraordinary, at 5%. Whatever the vendors are on... I want some.

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“We need a housing market that is best described as boring. We can’t go on thinking that your home is your investment, your retirement plan, and your roof over your head. We have to live in a country where housing becomes over a long period of time more affordable, and that means steadier house prices without boom or bust.”

Grant Shapps was speaking at the Housing Market Intelligence Conference, where he also called for more house building.

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Figures published by the Department for Communities and Local Government show house prices up 0.7% in August, leaving them 8.3% higher than a year ago. (The data's relatively old because it's based on completions.) The three-month change - a better indicator - shows house price inflation slowing, to 0.8% in the three months to the end of August, from 1.7% in the three months to May.

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It's the RICS "report"... 44% of those (265) surveyed believed house prices were falling in their areas... which is what's grabbing this morning's newsprint. However, 50% reported stable prices. I've included this for the sake of being complete. Really, you might as well stick your own fingers in the air. Or somewhere.

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Figures by insurers Genworth Financial get the Daily Mail a bit bothered on behalf of a generation of first-time buyers barred from the property market by a lack of finance options.

The number of mortgages taken out by people with only a 10 per cent deposit - loans which are typically associated with first-time buyers - dived from 245,000 in 2006 to just 28,000 in 2009; an 89 per cent fall.

The university professor putting the figures together points to implications to the economy and the savings gap, highlighting property's value as a way of insuring against inflation. That's one way of putting it. The other way - which is also mentioned - is property ownership as "wealth creation"... the thing that has priced first-time buyers out of the market. Hmm. There's no way around this... property prices that rise faster than inflation are good for the last generation to leap onto the ladder while the bottom rung's still affordable, bad for everyone they leave behind. That's not an argument against property ownership, it's just a plea for logic.

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It's a 0.2% fall in September, the third consecutive fall, leaving prices 0.7% down since June. However the London Prime market - boosted by the one-off nature of many of the properties and their exposure to foreign money - obeys different rules. Prices are still just a shade off 15% up on where they were 12 months ago, and 23% above their March 2009 low.

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Halifax has just posted a 3.6% house price fall in September, almost halving the annual rate of inflation to just 2.6%. The 3.6% figure represents the biggest month-on-month drop since the Halifax began compiling the data in 1983. However, the margin of a month is economically fairly random and susceptible to volatile fluctuations, particularly during periods of low transaction levels. The three-month average has only dropped 0.9%. That won't stop us all wondering, however... is this the shape of things to come?

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Cluttons calls London house price wobble [Cluttons]
Prince Charles calls Chelsea Barracks designs insane [Telegraph] 
Quirky brochures [The Modern Estate Agent]
Essex Man is 20 [Independent]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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It's a snapshot taken by Zoopla, and it shows, most interestingly, what the downturn has meant to different parts of the country. Overall, the market's 8.7% off its 2007 peak. But London's just 3.5% off; Bath and NE Somerset just 1.5% off. Lincolnshire, on the other hand, is 11.2% of 2007 prices, and Nottinghamshire's 11% down. Go here to gather more numbers. With the market arguably on the turn, once more, it's tempting to wonder how long those 2007 records will last.

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It's a marginal rise in house prices for September, according to Nationwide, at 0.1%... pretty much under the radar of statistical significance. Much more interesting, the three month average (compared to the previous three month average) shows a weakening, of 0.9%. Annually, prices are 3.1% in the black, compared to 3.9% a month ago.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Land Registry figures for August show property prices rising 0.3%, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 6.7%. As ever, the pictures regionally very variable, with London showing an 11.4% annual climb, Yorkshire a 1.4% monthly fall.

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Back with the National Housing Federation, and a YouGov survey they commissioned that shows that 60% of middle class parents of children aged 20-30 don't believe their offspring will be able to buy a home of their own without their support. Most interesting... the age group that profited so dramatically from rising house prices and engaged fully in the boom ethos appears to have changed its mind. While 33% still wanted house prices to increase, 34% wanted prices to hold steady and 28% wanted them to fall.

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If the Financial Services Authority succeeds in bringing in rules to stop lenders lending to people who can't repay their debts, house prices will collapse, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. A momentary pause here while we consider that. Okay... we'll continue. But reckless mortgage lending's a thing of the distant, pre-credit crunch past? Yes?

In July it pointed out that so-called non-verified loans still made up 43% of all home loans granted in the first three months of 2010.

Quick, someone call in the regulator. There's some obvious that needs stating.

The regulator argued that this practice exposed the borrowers to debt in their eagerness to buy a home.

That should do it.

Seriously, a situation in which only reckless lending is what's supporting what things cost? It would be funny if it wasn't so frightening.

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Rightmove measures asking prices, using its own large dataset. The five weeks to September 11 show a 1.1% fall, adding up to a three-month fall of 3.4%, and bringing the annual rate of inflation down from 4.3% in August to 2.6%. The recent increase in supply, however, also looks like easing, with 11% fewer properties coming onto the market, than in August. Unsold properties per office remain at a record high of 79.

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Department for Communities and Local Government figures show house prices falling 0.3% in July, bringing annual growth down from 9.9% June-to-June, to 8.4% July-to-July. More here.

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Don't get too excited, it's the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, so not the most meaningful of reports, but here it is... a sharp one-month worsening in conditions according to surveyors/estate agents, with 32% more reporting falls than gains (compared to 8% last month). That's the biggest slide in confidence since June 2004. On the plus side, the gap between new homes for sale and new buyer interest closed a little. More here.

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Over-65s, apparently. According to research by Key Retirement Solutions, over-65s are, collectively (of course), £7.94bn richer than they were just three months ago, thanks to gains made by a collective property fund worth £775bn. As you'd expect if you've been reading beyond the headlines regarding the house price indices, the data is subject to wide regional differences. Big gains were made by Scottish pensioners; there were losses in the north of England. More here.

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Before the Office for National Statistics can make any sense of the role of national indices in a micro-geographical market with dwindling data, it will have to ask who needs an index and why. It will have to factor in the reality that property isn’t just another homogenous liquid asset that shifts fast enough to reflect wider economic confidence. Most of all, it will have to ask whether there’s such a thing as a 'useful' house price index, one that can be used by buyers and sellers to reflect on their own individual deals in any meaningful way, without contributing to boom-bust panic or encouraging irresponsible equity-withdrawal.

House prices indices... why?... and how?... wonders our publisher, in his guest column for Citywire.

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If someone tells you they saw this coming, they're lying. A second consecutive monthly rise in the HBOS index (0.2% in August, after 0.7% in July) brings the three-month average up 4.6% compared to a year ago. So what does this mean? A recovery in house prices? Forget about it... we're in for a difficult 12 months. The interesting point here is the contrast with the Nationwide index's behaviour in recent months, illustrating the unreliability of different indices using smaller-than-usual levels of data.

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Moneyweek editor Merryn Somerset Webb reveals some eye-catching figures from estate agents John D Wood.

In the last quarter the price of a house in Kensington or Holland Park has fallen by around 18%, while that of a flat is down just under 8%. Houses haven't fared so badly in Notting Hill, but they are still down by 9% or so. Also of interest is the price of so-called large houses (3,500 square feet plus) across the capital: for these "the second quarter has witnessed values falling back by 8.5%."

Don't expect foreign money to bail out the top of the London market, she warns.

The Rat and Mouse interview - Moneyweek's Merryn Somerset-Webb [July 30, 2010]

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Girl band estate agent through to X-Factor boot camp [Esatate Agent Today]
Richard Rogers rebuked by planning while repairing his home [Sunday Telegraph]
George Osborne's "unemployed" brother demonstrates how you don't need to be working to get buy a big house [Sunday Mirror]
Will Nick Clegg donate property profits to state? [Guardian]
In the top 5 of New York's worst landlords... a Brit [Property Hawk]
Roger Bootle's worried about houses... again [Sunday Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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Never knowingly beaten to a gloomy headline, Capital Economics chose Nationwide Index day to hammer home a bearish house price forecast with the assertion that we're to lose the equivalent of an average salary off the value of our homes between now and the end of next year. That's a 5% fall this year, and a 10% one in 2011... adding up to £23,000 on a property worth £163,500. Any increase in interest rates, combined with a tightening of credit conditions, will be enough - CE's Ed Stansfield argue - to throw us into an even worse house price crash. He points out, quite rightly, that the recent rebound in property prices lacked a firm foundation. More here.

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August showed a 0.9% fall in house prices, according to the Nationwide index, the second monthly fall in a row (and the only time there've been consecutive falls since February 2009). This leaves annual house price inflation down at 3.9%, a considerable easing off from the 10.5% it showed in April. Most interestingly, it brings the three-month average back to zero. Have house prices peaked, at least for the medium term? We believe so.

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In their latest survey, Hometrack reports a fall in house prices of 0.3%, following July's 0.1% drop. Annually, prices are still up 1.5%, but Hometrack analysts expect the current downward trend to continue for the next six to twelve months. More here.

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"There are just over 900,000 homes for sale at present. New stock is being added at the rate of 4,500 a day," says Henry Pryor of Housingexpert.net. "June's and July's sales were up by roughly 10,000 a month on 2009 but were still half what they were in 2006 and 2007." He says the imbalance of stock on sale over the number of buyers registered with estate agents means there is only an 8 per cent chance of a vendor successfully selling their property in the next month.

Graham Norwood talks to Henry Pryor, and looks forward to a difficult autumn in the Independent.

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The Land Registry's July house price data shows a rise in the monthly index by 0.4%, leaving the annual inflation rate at 6.7%. In London, house prices are up 12.1% on the year, and there's significant geographical variation, from the London gain to an annual loss in the North East (-1.4%) and monthly losses in the North East, East, North West and Wales. Download your copy of the report here.

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Blairs expand portfolio [Mirror]
Charlie Bruce buys in Beckenham [Mail]
On St John's Wood [Telegraph]
Buy now, buy later? [FT]
CGT damages BTL [FTAdvisor]
How much to set up an estate agency? [The Modern Estate Agent]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

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The National Statistician (available for after dinner speeches, bar mitzvahs etc) has begun his investigation into the efficacy of our house price indices. He'll spend this year focussing on the two reports issued by the Government: the Land Registry index, and the index published by the Department for Communities and Local Government. After that, he'll look at the Halifax and Nationwide indices (formulated by examining loan data), the Rightmove index (formulated by examining asking prices) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors report (formulated by throwing tea leaves against a brick wall while chanting).

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A rollercoaster ride for house prices [FT]
The social housing challenge [Observer]
No evidence for shortage of homes [Guardian]
N-Dubz's Dappy fined for trashing Docklands flat [Gigwise]
In New York: rent a teepee made from trash [The Brooklyn Paper]
Greek casino losses rattle Foxtons' owners [Guardian]
Second homes reach record high [Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog

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According to Savills, £850m of £5m+ homes were bought-and-sold in London between April and June, the second highest quarterly figure ever (after the same period, 2008). So far this year, the running total's at £1.6bn. But Savills' Lucian Cook doesn't expect the frenzy to last into the second half of the year, and predicts a sharp cooling off, leaving prime market house prices down slightly on the beginning of the year. More here.

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Buy-to-let lending in the second quarter reached its highest level since the end of 2008, rising 13% on the previous quarter, and 15% on the same period a year earlier. Buy-to-let mortgages accounted for 12% of all  new mortgages... the highest proportion since records began. Data, courtesy of the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Meanwhile, Acadametrics shows house prices recovering June losses with a gain of 0.1% in July, leaving the index 8.1% up on the year. Accompanying comment points to a "flat" market through the rest of the year. Repossessions are down, for the third consecutive quarter. CML data shows a 4.1% fall in the second quarter of the year. The outlook, however, isn't great... with unemployment likely to rise, interest rates in danger of rising and the Government's plan to cut support for borrowers. Oh yeah... good morning.

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In the Telegraph, the thorny and endlessly entertaining issue of house prices. And we're right to care, without feeling guilty. I know, I know... as a society, lower house prices would be to our benefit, and it's not fair that there's a generation priced off the property ladder and forced to dance to the tune of the nation's landlords. But remember the honest, decent families, vulnerable at the moment to job losses, who have bought a property in the last few years, and whose lives could be ruined (no exaggeration, check this out) by falling house prices coinciding with mortgage arrears. There's little pleasure to be gained from their suffering. So - as I said - concern about falling house prices isn't necessarily something to be ashamed of. And yet... how do you square a sentence like this:

Henry Holland-Hibbert, of Strutt & Parker, said he had just had "the best June ever".

With one like this, from the Guardian?:

Homeless migrants from eastern Europe in London who are unable to get benefits have become so impoverished that they are eating rats and drinking lethal cocktails of alcoholic handwash, a homeless charity has warned.

It's a shocking piece. The cliché would be to say that it puts the former feature in perspective, but that's all it would be... a cliché. It doesn't... it lives alongside in a bleak commentary on our complex, sophisticated, failing front line between economics and society.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Are the Media to blame for falling house prices? [Guardian]
London: rent v buy [The London Insider]
Worcestershire meadow excavated in search for Suzy Lamplugh's body [Independent] 
What Carter Estate Agents hates about... er... estate agents [Carter Estate Agents]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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RICS sees an overall fall in prices for the first time since July 2009, as buyers sit tight and vendors gather. On its own, the report isn't enough to have anyone reaching for the tin hat (believe it or not, RICS questioned just 242 member-estate agents), but the finding are in keeping with other indices. For the record, 28% more surveyors expected falls, over price rises, in the coming months.

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According to Rightmove, asking prices have dropped for the first time this year - a sign, they say, of more than 30,000 homes hitting the market each week, but with supply failing to be met by either demand or mortgage credit. Asking prices fell 0.6% in the month. According to Rightmove's Miles Shipside, it's a buyers' market, and more falls are likely through the second half of the year.

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The bears might be vindicated... it could still be a while before house prices regain their 2007 peak levels. On the verge of the second dip, here's Zoopla with data showing that after 16 months of gains, the average house is still £20,358 off its November 2007 peak. Even in London (which is surprising to me) the Zoopla data shows house prices 16.1% of their peak. More here.

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A rise in supply and a dip in new buyer registration has knocked RICS members' confidence in the market, leaving a balance of just +9% reporting prices rises in June (compared to +21% in May). Expectations for the rest of the year slipped into the negative. More here.

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Second viewing with the kids on a house in the country my clients are dying to buy. I am not hopeful. It came on eight weeks ago at £3m, has been dropped to £2.85m, but my clients' piggy bank "only" holds £2.5m. "So, how are you finding the market?" I ask the fairly mainstream estate agent, who I know quite well. "You doing many valuations? Is stuff coming on?" "Yes," she tells me, "loads of vals and stock levels are looking much better than they have been." "Great?" I say, but she's not looking at all upbeat. "Well it would be but buyers just don't want to make a decision. The buyers are sitting on their hands... Truth is," she tells me sotto voce, "we can't flaming sell anything." I shall start negotiations at £2.3m.

Tracy Kellett runs leading buying agents BDI Homefinders. Follow her on Twitter, here.

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HBOS data suggests the market cooling. June is showing house prices down 0.6% on the month, following a 0.5% fall in May, bringing the second quarter into the red, at -0.1%. Accompanying literature blames the increasing switchover from low supply, high demand to high supply, low demand. More here.

Well, up on the decade, by a factor of five (from 27,000 homes worth a million or more to 132,000) but down since the credit crunch (w/o the crunch, there be a further 43,000). Eighty per cent are in London. The SW postcode seems to have done best, multiplying its million-plus homes by 23 in the last ten years, and accounting for almost a third of the country's total. The research was by Santander.

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There's nothing like news that a Bank of England Monitory Policy Committee member has "laid awake a number of nights" worrying about the economy. It's a quote from Adam Posen, and what - specifically - he's lying awake worrying about is whether the UK economy is the verge of the mother of all double dips. I've been finding it tough, getting to sleep on these muggy nights, too. I recommend any of these. A recent Bank of England survey suggests tough times ahead for wannabe mortgage borrowers. Elsewhere, recent house price survey data feeds into double-dip fears.

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It's a modest monthly rise of 0.1% in June, according to Nationwide, leaving the annual rate of house price inflation down at 8.7% in June (down from 9.8% a month ago). By itself, there's not enough science here to confidently talk of trends, but taking other recent data into account, it's probably not premature to at least talk about a slowing in house price growth. Recent gains have all come with the proviso that this still wasn't a healthy market, and it was a lack of supply, rather than a surplus of interest, propping up prices. That appears to be changing.

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According to research by Zoopla... money. The average value of a property on a "Hill" is £341,446, compared to £184,546 for a "View". Full rundown below:

Most expensive:

1. Hill £341,446
2. Lane £328,378
3. Mews £294,869
4. Park £283,069
5. Green £269,861

Least expensive:

1. Street £155,515
2. Terrace £156,387
3. Crescent £176,942
4. Court £178,488
5. View £184,546

No mention, surprisingly, of "Villas" in that bottom list.

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The second report of the day, this one comes courtesy of the Land Registry and so carries some scientific weight and it shows prices falling by 0.2% from April into May, clawing back previous gains in the annual house price inflation rate, from 8.5% to 8.2%. In London, however, that figure's at 14.2%. In fact, there's considerable regional variation, with prices up 0.9% on the month in the South East, but dropping back 3.6% in the East Midlands.

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Property research and data company Hometrack reports a small, 0.1% rise in June, following an equally small rise in buyer registrations across England and Wales, but falls in demand in six out of ten regions. Homes coming to the market, on the other hand, rose by 2.9%. And that's the issue: that long-discussed shortage of property - the thing that many believe has been propping up prices - is quickly coming to an end. Interestingly, though, sales agreed were 2.8% higher. Average time on the market: 8.4 weeks; average proportion of asking price achieved: 94.3%.

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According to Rightmove, asking prices were up 0.3% in May, and up 5% on the year. In the accompanying comment, Rightmove's Miles Shipside wastes no time in pointing out that the movements are unsustainable in the mid-term, and hinted that new listings suggested expectations were becoming more modest.

Market report - Government pegs house price inflation at 10% [June 16, 2010]

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Land Registry data, analysed, by Savills, shows west and central London bouncing back considerably faster than the east from the house price slump, outstripping their previous 2007 peak while the east and south-east are still 13% off previous peaks. More here.

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That's the Department for Local Government and Communities data, based on completions in April. Annual inflation... 10.1%, the highest since October 2007; and a 0.4% increase on the month.

Market report - surveyors upbeat [June 15, 2010]

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Our agents and surveyors aren't going to let a falling HBOS index spoil the party... wherever they look, prices are rising, according to the latest RICS poll. The difference between those reporting a house price rise and those reporting a house price fall rose to +22, the highest figure since January. Maybe it's the sunshine. Or maybe it's all the cheap supermarket World Cup booze. At least some people are happy.

Market report - [June 10, 2010]
Market report - Halifax and Nationwide in rift [June 4, 2010]

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For a while, now, I've been of the belief that current house price indices, stock shortages, Capital Gains Tax increases, HIPs abolition were all worthy of comment, but would be rendered insignificant when compared to the effects of public sector cuts in the next few years. Graham Norwood appears to agree, and tests the theory in a great Observer piece, combining public sector with interest rate increases into something like a perfect storm.

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... based on the third successive fall in the Acadametrics index (based on completion prices following transactions in England and Wales). Prices - according to Acadametrics - fell 0.2% in May (prices even fell in London, by 0.1%). Transactions were down on the month too. Interestingly, though, despite the index's highly conservative recent monthly changes, its annual rate of inflation remains at a bunker-busting 9.7%. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property online, real estate

Land Registry figures show a 0.2% rise in April, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 8.5%, the highest that number's been since September 2007. In London the monthly figure's 1.6%, and annual inflation's at 14.8%.... not the kind of number we expected to see a year ago. Turnover? Sales were 26% higher across the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2009, but to put this in perspective they're still around half of what we were seeing in the years preceding the credit crunch.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Today HBOS index for May comes hot on the heels of yesterday's Nationwide report, but paints a very different picture... prices falling 0.4%, leaving annual house price inflation still in the black, but by a more modest 6.9% compared to Nationwide's 9.8%. Interestingly, both indices are formulated the same way, from their own mortgage approvals data. The fall in May, reported by HBOS, follows an April fall, of 0.1%. The message: exactly what it seems... a genuine lack of clarity, with recent political uncertainty combining with relatively small datasets.

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Against all the odds, house prices continue to rise, according to the latest Nationwide report, with a 0.5% rise in May, leaving the annual inflation figure at 9.8%, a whisker off last month's 10.5%. The accompanying comment uses low transaction rates and a scarcity of available property to explain the rises. More here.

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Excuse the slow day yesterday... I was dealing with computer issues. The one that went missing was - of couse - the Land Registry figures for April, which showed a further 0.2% monthly rise and left the annual rate of house price inflation at 8.5%, its highest since September 2007. In London, the figures are more startling... up 1.6% on the month, and 14.8% annually. We'll see, next, whether more stock coming to the market, due to the abolition of HIPs and the threat of Capital Gains Tax on second homes, affects the balance, and thus the index, in coming months.

And - according to Knight Frank - it's thanks to the Russians. The Knight Frank Prime London index has just seen its 14th consecutive monthly rise, up 1.4% in May, pushing it 23% above it's March 2009 low, and just 6.4% below its March 2008 peak. Interest is apparently being driven by a strong rouble. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Robert Peston points out the irony of a Tory rebellion over a move to end a tax policy introduced two years ago by Alastair Darling and return to Lawson-era tax rues. It's good reading. He also suggests that current uncertainty of Capital Gains Tax changes could have a negative effect on property prices. If they just did it, the market might take a temporary hit.

But if the uncertainty persists about when the new higher rate will be introduced, the negative effect on house prices could be much greater. Because for those sitting on significant capital gains above the tax free rate of £10,100, it becomes rational to flog properties pronto - to take advantage of the 18% rate and avoid a tax rate that looks set for most property investors to rise to more than double that. In a housing market that is still weak, a wave of panicky sales could push down prices in a significant way. Perhaps that doesn't matter. Certainly, if you are yet to buy your first home and feel priced out of the market, you'll say hooray if prices fall.

Presumably he's talking about investors with large portfolios? Individual investors selling larger properties aren't going to help out first-time buyers. Those with smaller, first-time buyer-level properties have less to gain by selling now, and might want to hang around to enjoy rising yields. The big question is whether investors with large portfolios will be affected at all, or whether they'll be able to shelter the properties in a company or take advantage of the promised loopholes for entrepreneurs. Back to uncertainty.

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What?! It's (guess who) Money Week, with a creative and interesting piece, looking at the value of UK property from a gold standard position. Relevant? Meaningful? Should UK property be priced up as if it's an international commodity? Debatable. But - like I said - interesting:

House prices are now at levels last seen in the early 1990s, at the bottom of the last bear market. The average house price is currently 25% below its average of the last 40 years.

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The surveyors' role in the credit crisis has been raked over often enough... from naive running with the herd to cynical serving of the mortgage machine. Caught with their pants down, then; they're pulling their belts so tight, now, their eyes are bulging. This, from the Daily Mail:

A typical example is a reader from South London who paid £176,000 for a house four years ago. After spending £24,000 on improvements and getting three estate agents round, the house was valued at between £200,000 and £216,000 in February. But when the owners tried to remortgage last month, their bank's surveyor put a maximum price of just £160,000 on it.

I don't know how "typical" those figures are, but the problem is one I've encoutered in conversation with brokers. But who would be a surveyor?

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Zoopla's revealed the UK's most expensive postcodes, and it's topped - less than surprisingly - with W8, where average property prices are in excess of £1.5m. The most expensive street? Kensington Palace Gardens... at £18m a house, on average. Other £1m+ postcodes are SW7, SW3, W11 and SW10. Virginia Water, alone, represents the rest of the country in the top ten list.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Asking prices rose 0.7% in May - according to Rightmove - after a 2.6% increase in April, leaving the annual rate of increase at 4.3%, down from 6%. In London, asking prices actually dropped in the month - despite all that chat about Euro- and Dollar-rich foreign buyers plundering the London market - by 0.4% in May, leaving the annual change at 5.7%. In accompanying comment, the suggestion is that a rush of vendors hasn't been met by a rush of buyers able to proceed.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The Department for Communities figures - based on completions and so more meaningful than others - show a 0.75% rise month-to-month into March, the 12th consecutive monthly rise, leaving annual inflation up 9.7%, the highest it's been since November 2007. In London, prices have risen an amazing 15.7% in a year. Sustainable? How can it be?

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

I almost didn't bother posting this, but here it is... do with it what you will. It's the latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors highly scientific report into the mood of the market. Expect a post-election bounce, they say; especially in London, where 55% more agents reckon prices are rising than falling, up from 32% in March. Surely, you can provide a highly scientific report that's subtle to understand. Or a subjective, unscientific report that comes in an easily digestible headline. But as long as RICS insists on bringing subjective, unscientific reports that are tortuous to explain, we'd say, take them lightly.

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Clarity is the goal. Events are moving by the hour, and there’s a real possibility that by the time you’re reading this a political deal, cutting the thread on Britain’s hung parliament, will have been done, and the situation will be a little clearer. If, however, like the nation of estate agents, it’s a clear view of the short-term future of the residential property market you’re seeking, it’s probably safe to say there’s time to leave the room and make a cup of tea.

Our publisher looks at the effect of the current political crisis on the property market, in his guest column for Citywire.

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According to the Land Registry, house prices celebrated the thaw and marked the spring bounce by... falling in March. They dropped 0.6% month-to-month, although they still settled 7.5% higher than March 2009. London - by the way - did manage a rise, of 1.6%. The slack was more than compensated for in the east midlands, where prices fell 2.1%.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

It's a single per cent increase on the month, leading to 10.5% growth over the year, pushing the Nationwide index into annual double digit growth for the first time since June 2007.

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It's Hometrack, calling April over, and reporting an index that's 1.8% up on the year, but just 0.2% up on the month. The survey is consists of what agents and surveyors consider realistic market values, so it's not entirely scientific... but then, with actual data sets so low, what is? The mainstream media's receiving the Hometrack index in one of two ways. "The annual growth figure is at its highest since January 2008." "The monthly rate of growth is slowing." Take your pick.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Sometimes we don't want what's good for us. As a society, we could do with lower house prices. As individuals, we quite like the idea of making tax-free profits on the single biggest investment of our lives. A Government's job is to look after society. It's voted in by individuals. Hmmm.

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The headlines: asking prices of newly listed properties are 2.6% up on the month to an average of £229,614. Perhaps related to this is the fact that unsold stock is at its highest since October. And - according to the Economist - you just can't keep house prices down. They've a fascinating survey of global prices demonstrating that it's not just in the UK that an overvalued property market appears destined to continue experiencing house price inflation.

British house prices had risen by nearly 10% in the year to the end of the first quarter of 2010, but the country’s price-to-rent ratio still outstrips its long-term average by nearly a third. This pattern—of prices rising in markets where houses still look overvalued—is also seen in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Sweden and Canada.

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I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery. The timing of my measure should help to avoid a return to the conditions of the 1980s where the failure to take early action guaranteed worse problems later on. I believe these measures will help to ensure a more balanced recovery.

From an interesting piece, on the This Is Money blog, about Gordon Brown's record on house prices.

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A bit of fun courtesy of Zoopla! (I'm not actually that excited. The exclamation mark comes with the name of the website. Like Yahoo! Doh, did it again...) As you might expect, Tory voters have bigger houses. The average property value in a Tory constituency is £257,518 compared to £168,112 in a Labour constituency. I do find the scale of the difference somewhat surprising. However, property wealth is ultimately spread fairly evenly between the parties, since there are more properties in Labour-held wards. Interestingly, Gordon Brown's own constituency has seen the bigger house price rises, than either David Cameron's or Nick Clegg's. More nonsense, here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

And in contrast to the last one, this one means something. Based on completion data, house prices, in February, were 7.4% up on the year, and 0.1% lower on the month. Interestingly, at the first-time buyer end of the market, prices were up 9.3% on the year, suggesting those Stamp Duty changes couldn't have come too soon. Grab the actual, factual report by clicking this.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors report time, so if it's clarity you want, move along, nothing to see here. The headlines: properties coming onto the market outnumbered new buyers in March (said 21% more surveyors than, er, disagreed); and 9% more surveyors saw price rises than, er, didn't (down from 18% in February and 30% in March). Completed sales fell from 18 per surveyor in February, to 17. A caveat... the picture's very regional, and London continues to "perform well". Have a look at the press release here, and then see how bewildered broadsheet journalists lift whole paragraphs.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

After February's surprise (to some) 1.6% fall, the Halifax index is climbing again, up 1.1% in March, and up 5.2% on the year. Averaged across Q1 of 2010, prices are up 0.6% on Q4 of 2009. That's a significantly lower rise than the 3.6% rise between Q3 and Q4, but it's to be expected (seasonal factors, what was to believed to be the end of the Stamp Duty holiday).

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Writing for Wharf.co.uk, he's sick of it. House price chat is making him sick. And it's back with a vengeance, he says. On the DLR:

Two calls in every three are: "I don't know if it's too far a walk from the station for you, I haven't seen it yet but the area's really going to be up and coming thanks to the new station and now's a perfect time to buy."

I don't want to accuse him of imagining things - because that might suggest he's crazy - but really?!! Fun piece, though... and, of course, when he says it does us not good, he's right.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Nationwide reveals a house price index up 0.7% in March, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 9%, down marginally from 9.2% February-to-February. The three-month-against-three-month annual inflation rate was down, too, from 1.8% to 1.6%. The index was led - and in a big way - by the London market, up 15.7% on the year.

What?! says Jonathan Prynn on his Evening Standard blog.

Real incomes are falling, mortgage deals are still in short supply except for those with at least a 25 per cent deposit and unemployment is still close to its cyclical peak.

So how can this make any sense? It's a market, he argues, twisted out of shape by low interest rates and a tiny data set, and we'd agree. He dubs this the "phoney war - post-crisis and pre-austerity". It's an interesting piece.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Average house prices are down 0.3% in February, but up 7% on the same time last year, according to the latest Land Registry report. Importantly, the difference between 2009 and 2010 is growing, up from 5.2% in January. London's leading the "resurgence", with an annual increase of 11.9%. The North East is yet to go into the black.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

At a recent roundtable of top economists at the Long Finance Group together with a think tank of leading City professionals, the over whelming view was that house prices were certain to crash.

Blogger Gary Wright argues it doesn't matter who wins the general election, necessary cost-cutting and a Bank of England neutered by low interest rates mean sliding house prices in 2011.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to Rightmove figures, asking prices heading into March - traditionally a big month for the market - have risen just 0.1%, and in London they've actually fallen, by 2.5%. Vendors are up by more than a quarter, forcing some "correction" to prices boosted by a shortage of supply at the beginning of the year.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to the National House and Planning Advice Unit, 90% of couples under 40 with children can't afford to own a home in London. In the south east as a whole, the figure is 76.2%... hardly cause for a cigar, either. Deposits as a percentage of income have risen from 16% in 2000 to 64%, and yet the London property market manages to sustain itself, even throughout a global property crisis. The fundamentals still point to a crash, we're told; but perhaps the measure of "conventional "affordability" no longer applies to property... because there simply isn't enough of it. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Remember, it's been a truth pretty much universally acknowledged, that it's not been the number of renters with good fortunes but the lack of available properties that's been supporting the property market recovery in recent months. February - according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors - was the second consecutive month in which new properties coming onto the market outstripped new enquiries. More surveyors were still reporting house price rises than falls, but only 17% more, compared with 31% in January, and far fewer than predicted. How long will vendors be able to call the shots?

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Somewhat bravely - we believe - Phil Spencer is advising homeowners to sell now, buy again later.

Clinch a sale at today’s prices, but buy after the election, when values might dip and you can get more for your money.

All the logic's in Phil's favour. Wages are about to be squeezed, taxes are about to go up, lending's about to be squeezed, the market's currently bubbling along on little more than blind faith. But he's still brave to say this. I've seen so many people get their bank balances burned trying this in the past, and I'm sure Phil's seen even more. And as his onscreen partner knows, this kind of thing can come back and haunt you.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

According to Mouseprice.com, Belgravia's Chester Square remains on top if the UK house price league, with an average property value of £6.6m, proving a vision of a property-owning democracy worked out well for Margaret Thatcher.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Everywhere else you look, extraordinary, temporary measures look like becoming standards on which the house price recovery’s being built. A bank base rate of 0.5%? Fine. It would still be historically extremely low at, say 3.5%, but many believe it would cripple the property market. A banking sector functioning off the back of £185bn Special Liquidity Scheme, a £134bn Credit Guarantee Scheme, £200bn of quantitative easing, with lending targets written into law? Okay, but what happens when the banks return, cap-in-hand, warning of a 2011 mortgage famine? The different between 2010/2011 and 2008/2009 is that one is immediately after an election, rather than before. The will to save the property market at the cost of the country’s finances might not be there as we head into next year.

Our publisher looks at some fundamentals and winces, in his guest column for Citywire.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

"It seems unlikely prices will dip again" this year, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, who point to limited supply and continuing low interest rates as reasons for faith in UK residential property prices. But - according to the Investors' Chronicle - RICS fails to take note of sterling's relationship with the dollar. In an interesting article, Chris Dillow points out the historical relationship between a strong pound and rising property prices. It's a puzzling relationship, counter-intuitive in many ways, but Dillow links house prices to economic expectations in a way that leads to this:

The message here is simple. If you think the pound will fall, you should also be pessimistic about house prices.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Against all the odds - and, some may say, all logic and common sense - the UK was one of just five European countries in which house prices rose last year. In the Royal Institution of Chartered Accountants' latest European Housing Review the UK comes fifth to Norway (up 12%), Finland (up 8%), Sweden (noticing a pattern here? up 7%) and Austria (which, along with Switzerland, never experienced a downturn). The worst performing country? Latvia, where house prices halved. It's interesting reading. Find the official summary (in pdf format), here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's a 2.1% rise in January, leaving prices 5.2% higher across the 12 months. Average transactions are up, too; from an unimpressive 42,523 a month August to November 2008, to a less-than-impressive 57,722 the same period 2009.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Primelocation's Prime Index shows increasing stock at the top end of the market... 4.5% on the month, 17% across the year. Interestingly, an accompanying survey claims almost half (47%) of vendors believe the market's going to recover fully in the next two years. The fact that more than half don't might suggest why top end sellers (perhaps with more than one property and so fearful of an imminent rise in Capital Gains Tax) might be unloading right now.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Quick off the mark, Hometrack are brandishing the February figures. It was a 0.3% rise, bringing the annual figure into the black (up 0.4%) for the first time in two years. Hometrack aren't shouting boom, like others they point to a lack of supply for artificially inflating the market.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Weather-related jitters, or the end of the recovery? Nationwide posts it's first monthly fall in house prices since last April, with the value of the average UK home down 1%. Year-on-year, the numbers are still up, by 9.2%; and the (arguably more meaningful) three-month average shows a gain of 1.6%.

Technorati Tags: property TV, real estate agents

RBS’s new product, which will work effectively like a tradable tracker with a closing date, will offer flexibility in terms of both the direction of the market and the length of exposure, and could prove popular among more ambitious investors, perhaps buy-to-let landlords whose future pensions currently consist of large property portfolios. Questions – however – are bound to be asked about RBS’s own influence on house prices, particularly at a time when credit conditions are likely to be shaping the market. Should the lender be selling risks on a volatile market that it, possibly to an increasing degree in the next 24 months, controls?

Our publisher looks at a new residential property derivative, to be launched by RBS shortly.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

... with a house price survey. Apparently, house prices in Albert Square would have risen 436% since the show was launched, with the average AS property now worth £574,764 (compared to just over £122, 813 back in 1985). Impressive, but nothing compared to the 7369% rise in house values seen on Coronation Street. Incidentally, owner of the most valuable house in The Square? Former hooker Pat Evans. More of this nonsense, here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to Shelter, if food bills had followed property prices since 1971, we'd be trying to find £420 a week. We'd be faced with paying £2.43 for a pint of milk, £47.51 for a chicken and £20.22 for a jar of coffee. (In other words, we'd all be shopping in Waitrose.)

Shelter's director of policy and campaigns Kay Boycott said: "These calculations show just how out of line the cost of housing has become - yet we seem to have just accepted these inflated prices as normal in a way we wouldn't with anything else."

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The Department for Communities & Local Government published their December 2009 house price index today, so now seems as good a time as any to call it on 2009. The new data shows a 0.8% rise November-to-December and a rise of 2.9% (UK figure) December 2008 to December 2009. Looking back to this... predictions made by experts at the end of 2008... we can call a winner. Except... we can't:

If you want some perspective on just how unexpected is the current so-called recovery, take a look at that illustration above. For the DCLG figures in full, go here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Back in November, residential property derivatives were pointing to a 5.7% rise in house prices by December 2011. That's already dropped to 2.2%, with a slower-than-expected economic recovery, punitive post-election taxes and slow lending to blame. More here. Meanwhile - here - there's talk of a second crash. The This Is Money panel of experts warn of falling house prices by the end of 2010.

Peter Hargreaves, of Hargreaves Lansdown, compares our situation with the U.S. where some homes have fallen in value by 60%. He and investment expert Justin Urquhart Stewart suggest property prices will plunge 10% here.

The piece confirms stories I've been hearing on the grapevine... out of control gazumping in the bonus belts.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Lombard's Jamie Dannhauser predicts UK house prices will return to stagnation at best, with falls possible, in the second half of the year, dragged down by poor mortgage availability, particularly to first-time buyers.

“The ‘dead cat bounce’ seems to be reaching its end,” Dannhauser said. The ratio of completed sales to the stock of available property, which has a “lead relationship” for house prices, has declined during the past two months, he said.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The tenth consecutive month of gains in Knight Frank's Prime Central London posh property index leaves it a giant 11.5% higher than in January 2009. The monthly gain was just 1.1% (down from 2.1% in December 2009), and left average prices at the top end of the London market 15% above the bottom of the market, but still 12% of its peak. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

“Son, make as many mistakes as you like…… just do not make the same mistake twice.”

The Hip-Consultant blog questions our compulsive need for an exciting residential property market, and recommends a few dull years... good for the soul, good for long term stability and prosperity. And good luck with that. After less than a century as a country of property owners, a football-pools-attititude to the Halifax House Price Index is already so ingrained, it's hard to imagine it going anywhere (indeed, it's the madness that inspired this blog). But Hip-Consultant might be a bit premature if the suggestion is that recent house price moves are a sign of the start of another bull market. Limited supply, demand and data, and freakish interest rates make the current market very hard to read. Let's see what happens when any one of those factors is removed.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's a rise of 0.1% in the value of the average English and Welsh home. But - unlike others - the Hometrack index is still in the red, year-on-year, down 0.8%. Accompanying commentary also urges caution, pointing to an extreme shortage of supply covering up what is still dampened demand, and suggesting that - with transactions still low - a relatively small number of deals at the top end of the market may be unduly affecting the index.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Increased mortgage availability and a faith in the continuation of low interest rates (until mid-2011, possibly beyond) has led CEBR to revise its house price predictions upward. They now expect a 6% rise in 2010, and a rise of 20% by the end of 2013.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Nationwide's January house price index report shows a 1.2% rise during the month, leaving the index 8.6% up on the year (compared with 5.9% December-to-December). Expect headlines-claiming double-digit house price growth when the index is revised next month, say Nationwide.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Winkworth wants us to know that some neighbourhoods are back at pre-crash, 2007-peak levels, after gains of as much as 20% in the second half of 2009. The main driver appears to have been overseas buyers cashing in on a puny pound. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Andrew Sentance, a Monetary Policy Committee member, no less, compares the 80s housing crash to the 90s housing crash, and points out that a shortage of property during the 80s crash, as opposed to a surplus ten years later, meant that prices bounced back and rose much quicker.

"In terms of the balance of demand and supply in residential property, most of the evidence suggests that the current position is closer to the early 1980s situation than the early 1990s."

He points out how quickly house builders cut back in the previous decade and suggests that - with continued low interest rates - the future may be one of house price growth.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The attention of the media has been captured by a longterm house price report by the Halifax research department. The headlines:

• house prices have risen, on average, 2.7% more than inflation each of the last fifty years.
• earnings have increased 2% per year.
• the biggest single increase was in the last decade... 62%.
• the average uk home has increased by 273% since 1959.
• in modern money, the average house would have cost £43,000 in 1959
• in 1959, one in seven homes had outside toilets.
• in 2009, one in 500 homes had outside toilets.
• interestingly, four distinct, but relatively short, house price booms have been responsible for the inflation-busting gains. Outside of these periods, the norm for house prices is stagnation or fall.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

British vendors headed into the new year confident, according to Rightmove, raising asking prices by 0.4% in January, giving them a 4.1% lead on January 2008, and only 8.3% less confident about squeezing a buyer until their pips squeak than they were in May 2008 at the peak of the market. In a funny kind of way, though, it's a lack of confidence underlying the movement, according to the accompanying literature. Homeowners are so spooked by the economy and the looming election that they're not putting their homes on the market. Hence a scarcity of available property. Hence a sellers' market.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

A survey by estate agents John D Wood of 4,000 houses and 5,500 flats in London's most expensive postcodes shows astonishing house price growth of 51% from last February's low, bringing them, on average, 3% above their summer 2007 peak. The reasons? Low interest rates presumably mean there's little point in holding cash, and the weak pound must be off-setting any talk of London being less attractive than it was to foreign buyers.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Let's start with the Communities and Local Government figures, because we can at least pretend they mean something without having to pull all sorts of strange facial expressions. The data relates to November, shows a monthly rise of 1.7%, pushes the price of "the average UK home" back above £200,000 and the annual house price inflation figure into the black (0.6%) for the first time since June 2008. Now to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Want clarity? Close your browser now, then. In December, RICS reports that 30% more surveyors thought house prices were rising than thought they were falling. In November, the difference had been 35%. So, there you go. The housing market was 5% worse. Or something.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

As far as the Rat and Mouse is concerned, the fat lady doesn't start singing on 2009 until the Government's completion figures are posted, but the last Halifax survey of 2009 certainly carries some influence. Here you go... prices rose 1% in December, leaving the annual rate officially 1.1%, just pushing into the black in December. That last figures compares the three-month average, the HBOS's preferred method of comparison. If you take a more simplistic December to December view (preferred - to HBOS's dismay - by the newspapers) it was up 5.6%. HBOS survey here. Newspaper reportage here.

Now wish me luck as I attempt to travel from north Yorkshire to south west England. Further updates depending on snow, ice, trains and 3G dongle.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Savills - yesterday - went against the grain with some headline-catching predictions about property prices looking forward into the decade. Expect a 40% hike in house prices by the end of 2019, they say. What? Just 40%? said Assetz.

"We would expect prices to increase by up to six per cent per annum over the next decade. “Continued and extreme housing shortages versus high demand give us confidence that growth will continue over the coming 10 years.”

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's 2010 house price prediction time. Now, remember, we don't officially call 2009 until the Government releases their own official (completion-based) figures. But just because it's interesting, here's what people were saying this time last year.

The only consensus... house prices were going to plummet in 2009. And yet... Nationwide - this morning - called a gain, for what it's worth.

This year, there's not even that amount of consensus. It looks like this:

Citi ↑5% to 10%
Assetz ↑5%
Zoopla ↑2% to 3%
The Rat and Mouse ↑2%
National Association of Estate Agents NO CHANGE
Halifax NO CHANGE
Nationwide NO CHANGE
Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors ↓1% to 2%
Cluttons ↓3%
Savills ↓3%
Market Oracle ↓3.5%
Global Insight ↓5%
Ernst & Young ↓5%
Jones Lang LaSalle ↓7%
Capital Economics ↓10%
Armstrong Davis ↓10% to 15%

Council of Mortgage Lenders NO BETS

So... from a gain of 10% to a fall of 15%. Place your bets.

There's still the question of unknown unknowns in the economy. We've little money or appetite left for future bailouts, so anything approaching a crisis or emergency will surely be enough deliver a crunching knock-out blow to any residential property recovery. Counting that out, all eyes are on the unemployment figures. What we've seen of a property recovery has been thoroughly reliant on a shortage of stock. If unemployed leads to forced sales, the picture will look very different. Next year's also a general election and World Cup year. Don't expect much action in the first half of 2010... it will all happen from late summer onward. The Rat and Mouse was tempted to join Nationwide and Halifax with a NO CHANGE prediction, but we don't like to look boring. So - optimistic about unemployment - we've predicted a small gain, which we think will prove less than significant against general inflation. London - separately - may see something bigger... more like 8%.

What do you think?

That's it from us until 2010. Happy New Year to all our readers, and thanks so much for coming back again and again and making 2009 such a busy year. Thanks to all our advertisers, too... for keeping the blog alive. And remember - if you like what we do - be kind and nominate us here. We could nominate ourselves, but we haven't... and we'd like to think somebody else might.

Now go pop some champagne.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate, theRatandMouse

It was a 0.4% rise in December, the eighth consecutive monthly gain according to the Nationwide index, and - although the Rat and Mouse doesn't like to call it on the year for a few week, until the Government's own figures are published - they're saying it makes 2009 a year of residential property gains (5.9% to be exact), and the Noughties a decade of gains (117%, no less). The index is, however, still 12.2% off its October 2007 peak.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

According to a Halifax survey, they're headed by Kensington's Wycombe Square, with an average property value of £5.4m. In fact, seven of them are in the Kensington & Chelsea borough. But at number two it's Hampstead's Ingram Avenue (average property price: £4.9m). The research used Land Registry data covering the last five years.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The KF Prime Central Index is up 2.1% in December, giving a 13.8% lift since March, but still a way off, in fact 13.4% off, their March 2008 high. Interestingly, the three-month average is at its highest (5.5%) since the recovery. Chelsea, Kensington and Knightsbridge show the largest gains.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Traditionally, what happens in the auction houses is seen as an indicator for what's likely to happen to the major house price indices... which might be worrying to somebody who's recently bought, because the auction discount is currently getting bigger, not smaller. In November, the discount - according to Fathom Consulting and Zoopla - is 22%, up from 18% in October. Although it's significantly smaller than it was during the great panic of 2008, it's still way above the long-term average. Go here for a cool graph.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Today's Rightmove survey of asking prices is in broad agreement with FindaProperty's on Friday. Prices fell 2.2% this month nationally, and by 1.2% in London (led by Hounslow, with a 6.2% fall, and - wait for it - Kensington & Chelsea, where vendors were discounting by 5%... which means almost £100,000 in that neighbourhood). Rightmove warns of weakening prices in 2010.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

According to a buying agent - quoted here - bankers are ready to plough what's left of their bonuses into London property early in the New Year, before there's any chance of house prices starting to rise significantly. That's despite widespread warning of a dead market next year as everyone obsesses over the election and the World Cup, or even a double dip. What this suggests to the Rat and Mouse is the prospect of even more of a split UK property market... London heading one way... most of the rest of the country the other.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Asking prices have fallen for a second month, according to FindaProperty.com, down 0.4%, following a 0.5% fall last month. Across the year, there's a fall of 0.8%. The numbers are consistent with Rightmove's... and we find ourselves in the odd situation in which the asking prices indices, calculated by the portals, are more pessimistic that the official completion figures. The answer is almost certainly seasonal (sellers pricing to sell in a slow market), and perhaps the difference between asking price and exchange price has been reduced toward the end of the year. We won't know for a while. FindaProperty's London-specific figures show 0.6% fall on the month, but that's in the context of a rise of 7.1% annually.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Expensive houses have apparently got 10-12% more expensive since March, with a lack of supply the main driver. The Buying Solution also report that private rented accommodation is way down... firming up rents for landlords. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The fifth consecutive house price rise shows the average property up 1.4% in November, leaving the index up 4.2% on the year... higher, I'd suggest, than most of us considered back in January. According to the accompanying literature, we can look to a shortage of property for supporting prices in 2009. Expect - they say - to see that change in the new year, when a new tide of sellers come onto the market. There's even talk of a double dip.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

It's Fitch, with the warning that poor employment prospects and a continuation of tough lending conditions could see house prices suffering once again in the coming years, by as much as a third off their 2007 peak. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Adam Posen of the Bank of England's MPC has suggested an extra tax - a bubble tax - aimed at reigning in a future runaway property price index. A little bit here added to Stamp Duty, perhaps a little Capital Gains Tax added to first homes there (even - wait for this - retrospectively to existing homes, so as to avoid weighting the market against new purchasers)... were the thrust of his conference speech yesterday. It certainly makes a change from the collective lie that the MPC either can or (technically) should control house prices with interest rates... but screwing with millions of homeowners' downsizing/retirement plans because some suits do/don't/do/don't believe in a free market? Come on... More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Surely that's it, before we all bed down for a quiet Christmas/New Year? Nationwide reports the seventh consecutive rise in house prices, up 0.5% in November, and leaving the annual house price movement in the black, up 2.7%. Unsurprisingly (why? seasonal reasons, and the ultimate unsustainability of this autumns house price fight back) the three-month to three-month gain is slowing (from 3.5% in October to 2.8% in November).

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The fifth consecutive monthly rise according to the Land Registry leaves prices 0.6% up on the month and now just 3.4% down on the year. Interestingly, the north-west of England led the charge, with a 1.9% uplift.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Homes in catchment areas for good schools sell at a premium, we all know that. The Nationwide's the latest to put a number on it, and - interestingly - they've factored in the performance of the pupils.

The lender found that for every 10% increase in the Sats pass rate the average price of a nearby house rose by 3.3%. Across England as a whole this meant an extra £5,860 on the average house price of £176,611.

Another reason to call the cops if you catch them skiving off school. That's, of course, if you buy the freakonomics.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Mortgage rates up in second crash fears [Sunday Times]
End of Stamp Duty holiday unlikely to affect overall market [This Is Money]
House prices expected to rise 5% in 2010 [Net-Lettings.co.uk]
Nationwide: house price recovery about to end [Independent]
Safe as houses [Guardian]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

At a conference on the outskirts of Mayfair, a journalist from the Standard heard some interesting statistics.

The fact that nearly 30% of all new homes in London are sold in places like Hong Kong and Singapore did not surprise the audience of 70 builders and estate agents. Those in the market seem to know perfectly well that teams from agents like King Sturge spend half their lives in humid hotels in Asia.

So? The charge is that the London new-build market is being artificially supported and is dependent on overseas money. Londoners want new-builds, but they can't afford them at prices governed by Asian investment money. It's an interesting read.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

HSBC knows, and they're telling. Among the trivia (43,000 new property millionaires in the last 15 years etc):

61% of £1million plus properties sold over the last 15 years were in Greater London. Kensington and Chelsea (18% of sales) and the City of Westminster (12% of sales) accounted for nearly half of all of London's £1million plus sales.

And:

The average house price across England and Wales has risen 213% over the past 15 years from £64,836 in 1995 to £202,813 in 2009 Q2.

Oooh, this has such a 2007 feel to it.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Rightmove's index shows a fall in asking prices in the four weeks to November 7. Don't worry, says Miles Shipside, it's seasonal... as homeowners shift their attention to Christmas trees and Amazon, rather than offers and mortgages. In Rightmove world, incidentally, house prices are, in annual terms, back in the black... at 1.6%, the highest number since May 2008.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

Why "official"? Aren't Halifax or Nationwide figures "official"? Not as official... these figures courtesy of the Department of Communities and Local Government count completion prices, so they're about as official as they get. They're also - by their nature - late. So, for September, it's a 1.2% rise in the price of the average UK home (you know, this one), leaving prices at November 2008 levels, and narrowing the annual difference to -4.1%, it's lowest level for 13 months.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' monthly report is all about gazumping, and a runaway market in London like nothing seen since December 1996. Here comes da boom. Now for the other side of the coin. Sales are down at levels 50% lower than in the pre-correction era; a lack of supply is unbalancing the market; the whole RICS survey methodology, which in effect measures what estate agents feel they can get away with, is highly suspect. More here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

We've been skeptical, recently, about the recent recovery in house prices... pointing out the micro-geographical nature of any increasing prices, the dangers associated with increasing unemployment, increasing interest rates and increasing supply. According to a survey of the property derivatives sector, the recovery will slow from what looks like a 5.5% increase in 2009, to somewhere around half that for the next few years. More here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate

The Times runs a nice overview of Savills's short term predictions for some of London's neighbourhoods, and takes a closer look at how they've been doing very recently. It's a good read, here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Taylor Wimpey are all sold out, they say, and are planning on raising prices on new homes in the New Year. Redrow report reservations are up almost 50% on last year, and also predict prices rises in 2010.

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According to data from Zoopla.co.uk, there are 35% fewer property millionaires now than there were in November 2007. Which, in many ways, is hardly surprising. But it gets interesting in the detail. In the North East of the country, there are 83% fewer homes worth a million or more. Eighty per cent of homes in the million plus bracket are still to be found in the South East. More of this nonsense, here.

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And a rise of 1.2% in October, leaving the annual change at -4.7%. There's certainly a consistency at the moment, in the world of the property price index.

Market report - Hometrack [November 2, 2009]

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Haart's London Property Index is showing a 22% rise since January, the average price of a London property rocketing from £152,207 to £194, 052. Hotspots? Blackheath Village, Southgate and Willesden Green. More here.

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A third monthly rise - 0.2% in October - leaving house prices down 4.2% on October 2008. Accompanying editorial isn't too upbeat, however, warning that the "pent-up demand" is beginning to thin.

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It's Nationwide, reporting a 0.4% rise in October, leaving house prices 2% above their October 2008 level, and in the black (on an annual basis) for the first time since March 2008. So what's going on? With unemployment - a trailing indicator - still rising, credit hard to come by and interest rates capable of heading in one direction only... the Nationwide index has risen 4.6% so far this year. Well, October's 0.4% rise did what it needed to get headlines, but it was a moderate rise, still based on a small data sample, and flattered by appalling conditions a year ago. Don't count any chickens.

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Nationally, it's a 0.9% increase in September, slowing the annual rate of decline to 5.6%. London led the charge with a monthly increase of 1.3%, reducing the annual change to -3.2%.

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Normally, the Rat and Mouse doesn't get into all this until much later in the year, but 4Homes has been pulling a few predictions out of the hat from agents and think-tanks. Our old friends Capital Economics are the most bearish, with a prediction of -10%. The most bullish? Savills. And a -3% prediction. Read it, including some interesting and - we predict - controversial commentary, here.

It's New Year's Eve, which means... property price prediction time [December 31, 2008]

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There's a David Cameron bounce, too.

A strong “Cameron bounce” is driving up property prices in central London as wealthy foreign buyers bank on a Conservative victory in next year's general election.

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Property asking prices in London have broken through the record high set in November 2007 as the drought of homes for sale around the country continues to distort the market.

In the four weeks to October 10, average asking price: £461, 157. In November 2007: £412, 731.

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If you believe predictions by upmarket agents Knight Frank, expect to see London prices 38% up on current levels by 2014 (against national rises of 19%). But KN, you sound so confident. Why?

“The key reasons for our confidence with regard to this market are: uniquely in the UK — London will benefit from the global economic recovery, which is likely to considerably outpace that seen in the UK; sterling is set to remain relatively weak into the medium-term, encouraging international demand; the economic prospects in central London are brightening more rapidly than elsewhere in the UK.”

Okay. No specific mention of improved credit conditions, but I suppose that comes with the recovery. And if the picture of UK prices will be heavily influenced by larger London gains; within London, we should read into this the expectation that prime property will lead the London market.

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The vendor drought. It's what's keeping UK house prices on the up, according to the latest report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. The September document's out, and shows cockiness among its members (the number reporting prices rises over falls) at its highest level since May 2007. Cockiness is at its peak in the south (there are areas of the north where members are glum), but nobody's fooled that this isn't really about a shortage of supply.

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Fitch Ratings warns UK property prices will fall a further 17% after tight loan conditions and soaring unemployment perform a double whammy next year.

'A 30% fall from the peak of October 2007 would bring this ratio back in line with the long term average.' Given that prices are currently down 13% from peak, Fitch is therefore expecting a further fall of 17%.

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Over here, it doesn't look as if Times readers, at least, are buying the current crop of positive property price indices. Either that, or it's just that the bears are more politicised, more motivated to get out and vote. Either way... here's how it's looking right now:

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What polarisation? The polarisation taking place between those who think the worst is over, and those who think that this little, illogical, upspring in prices - caused largely regionally by desperation and a shortage of property - we're tottering on the brink of a second, big house price collapse. This won't help... Halifax reports the biggest three-month price rise since the peak of the market, at 2.8%, and a monthly rise of 1.6% in September. Annually, prices are down 7.4% (remember, they were 17.7% down, just in April).

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Another one... this time, a 0.2% rise in September, but heavily weighted toward the south. In fact, only 15% of postcodes saw any kind of a rise, and prices remained unchanged in 84% of areas. According to Hometrack, the average house in England and Wales is just 5.6% off where it was a year ago. But

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The first fall recorded in four months by the Land Registry... a 0.1% drop in August. Annually, we're now just 9.4% down (from 16.3%)... and the gap continues to narrow.

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In a survey of 1,100 MSN (Microsoft Network) users more than three quarters said they expected house prices to either remain stagnant or fall in the coming 12 months, with almost a half expecting a fall. Only 23% believed in the current (according to many indices) revival. More, here.

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A shortage of property and competition from foreign buyers is apparently pushing the best London property to just 5% off it's 2007 peak. Competitive bidding, gazumping, it's all back, according to Savills and Knight Frank. More, here.

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An interesting piece in the Standard points to estate agent nervousness about the failure of September to bring its traditional slew of vendors and new properties to the market. Prices in the capital have apparently - in some areas - topped their 2007 highs, unrealistically slanting national indices and putting the London market in a highly precarious position. More here.

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It's a strange headline, though, on Yahoo:

House prices actually rose in July, and by a not inconsiderable 1.4%. However, they were down 8.3% year-on-year... which doesn't a headline make. See it, unless they change it, here.

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During the three months to September, more agents reported feeling swell than not feeling swell, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. That's the first positive result in two years, driven by a shortage of homes, particularly in London and the south east. The RICS report is a vague confirmation of something we're seeing in more scientific market reports, but... all eyes on the lagging indicator that is employment, the future of interest rates, and pent-up vendor demand... there lies the future of house prices.

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The Ernst & Young Item Club predicts falling house prices in the first half of 2010 followed by two years of stagnation. More here.

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A monthly rise of 0.8% for August, the second in a row. The all-important three month average shows house prices 10.1% lower than they were the same period 2008. Demand's rising, supply remains low.

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Citigroup’s ever-interesting Michael Saunders has crunched all the numbers. He calculates that – assuming a 100 per cent mortgage, a product which is not exactly easy to find these days – the payments to buy an average house have halved to £6,700 per year (18.4 per cent of average full time male earnings) from £11,800 (34.3 per cent) in late 2007. This is well below the long-term average of 30 per cent and the lowest since 2002.

Until interest rates rise again, of course.

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There are good reasons to expect a second dip in the market later this year or early in 2010.

Such as rising interest rates, tighter lending criteria, the Brits a nutters. What? Here it is...

For reasons that a psychologist could better explain, the British are attacking the financial-services industry, even though it is the biggest branch of the economy. The chairman of the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, even proposed a tax on financial transactions to help limit the size of the industry. He described parts of banking as “socially useless.” With that sort of attitude, it won’t be surprising if many foreign bankers go elsewhere, withdrawing their support from the housing market.

Right, and right again. Punishing the financial institutions - in which we all hold a stake, no matter how indirectly - is a giant cutting off of noses.

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We had a hunch about this... based on the way our own traffic has increased during the recession. Now, there's confirmation from house price snoop facilitators Zoopla, who insist that Brits are still obsessed with how much their homes are worth and - more to the point - how much their neighbours' homes are worth. Obviously, increased use of the website isn't definitive proof of increased interest, but the way the traffic breaks down is interesting. London and the south-east contains the nosiest homeowners, the north-east the least. The nosiest street in the UK is Grand Avenue, in Camberley, Surrey. The wealthy are the most nosy. After neighbours, you're most likely to be snooped on by work colleagues, and then family members.

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Hometrack reports its first monthly rise in more than a year, 0.1% in August. The figure, however, was skewed toward the south... only 11% of the country showed a positive figure. In London, the rise was 0.3%, but - like everywhere - was fueled by a shortage of stock. More here.

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According to Walls & Futures, yes:

According to the Land Registry, over the past 20 months the average house price in London has fallen from £355,934 to £306,934. There is a fantastic opportunity for investors to re-enter the market.

The group is launching a central London residential fund, buying in the west (between K&C, Hammersmith and Merton), and aimed at grabbing a bit of recovery action. They're looking for a 10% yield, with a minimum buy-in of £25,000.

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Land Registry data for July shows a monthly rise of 1.7%, the largest single monthly hike since July 2004. Every region of England and Wales was invited to the party, bringing the annual house price fall down from 13.8% to 11.7%.

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For £90,000 you could be living above a sandwich shop in Wakefield. Or you could rent. Full article here.

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The fourth monthly rise in house prices, according to the Nationwide index, weighs in at 1.6%, bringing the three month average up 3.3%, the highest rate of growth since February 2007. The annual rate of deflation is - as a result - shrinking fast, down to 2.7% from 6.2%. The Nationwide index peaked in October 2007, 14.4% higher than its current level. Accompanying commentary points to abnormally low interest rates and a shortage of available property to explain the rapid increases. Both of these circumstances could change. And don't forget this.

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Forget the indices... they're (literally) history. Anybody with an interest in the future of house prices, these are the figures to watch.

More than one in six UK homes which house at least one person of working age does not have anyone in employment, official statistics show.

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Even the most pessimistic of pundits can no longer ignore the fact that a housing market recovery, of some sort, is underway.

Confidence, up. Prices, up. Sales, up. Stock... what stock? The talk is of gazumping and sealed bids. But what, we wonder, will happen when all those vendors do come blinking into the sunlight, once again?

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According to the Primelocation index for July, Prime London property saw asking prices turn positive, year-on-year, up 1.31% on the month and 0.33% annually. More here.

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Asking prices fell 2.2% in August, according to Rightmove, with a particularly large dose of reality taken in London, where they fell 3.8%. A sign we're about to enter another period of rapidly falling house prices? Not according to Rightmove, who point to August 2008's 2.3% decline, and make the claim that August sellers price more competitively to attract attention amongst a smaller pool of buyers.

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The Guardian harks back to...

... the halcyon days two years ago when the job of a valuation surveyor was little more than establishing the "comparables". A tough task indeed: dropping in for a chat at a local estate agency, and finding out what similar properties have gone for.

Actually, I have no memory of that. I do remember this, though.

The piece turns the spotlight on current valuation practices... confused, bewildered and frightened surveyors unsure where to turn for a price guide when market activity is so low and after so many have disgraced themselves so badly by turning into yes-men for apartment block developers. It's time - argues Patrick Collinson - for the RICS to take a good hard look at its members.

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The headlines... in the Prime London market, there was a probably insignificant increase (0.33%) in asking prices, but a significant reduction in stock levels, down 1.43% in June, or -2.53% in the Central London area. So where've the vendors gone? Prime London lettings stock increased, leaving them an astonishing 96% higher than a year ago, resulting in a 15th successive fall in average rent.

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And it's not Capital Economics! It's the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, and it's entirely unimpressed by the recent little flurry of market activity and firming of asking prices. Mortgage approvals, they say, will continue to until the final quarter of the year, while house price growth won't return until 2012.

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It's not the most valuable house price indicator of the bunch, but it is an indicator, and it's telling us asking prices rebounded by 0.6% in July (after a 0.4 fall in June), leaving them just 3.1% down on the year (from -5.5% in June). The website is reporting unseasonably strong traffic, including a 20% rise in new seller numbers. Click this for the actual report (pdf).

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The Government's house price index - always trailing but based on actual completion figures - appeared to little comment yesterday. It showed a fall for the average house price in May, down 0.1% in the month, down 0.4% in the quarter to the end of May and leaving the index down 12.5% on the year (from 13% in April and a peak of 13.6% in March). Download the actual report by clicking this.

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A new study by the accountants predicts further falls in 2010 and then a flat market, leaving 2015 prices (relative to inflation) still below 2008 levels, with a 30% chance of this remaining the case in 2020. Average property prices will - of course - rise in cash terms, but inflation will render those rises meaningless. More here.

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According to Savills...

At the estate agency's branch in Oxford, one in 10 properties is selling above the asking price while at its Truro branch, buyers have been queuing at the door before it has even been opened.

is that kind of urgency really rational? I'd say no... but we'll know more in autumn, when we'll have either reached and recovered from the bottom, or we'll look back on this as one of those little spikes common before either a continuing fall or, more likely, a long period of stagnation.

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According to the National Association of Estate Agents, the difference between what vendors want and what they get was down to just 1.9% in June, down from 6.3% in May. Agents are still selling, on average, just ten homes a month... but it seems a lack of supply is supporting prices. However, what this suggests is that with unemployment still likely to rise and mortgages scarce, all it will take is a increase in homes for sale for prices to topple once again.

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The all-important Halifax index is a timely reminder that we're still witnessing an unpredictable market. Property prices, it says, dropped by half a per cent in June, after May's headline-grabbing 2.6% rise. The annual rate of decline, however, continues to ease, from 16.3% to 15%. The quarterly movement - a decline of 1.9% - was the lowest since the beginning of 2008. Official press release, here.

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He's been looking at the difference between the Nationwide's raw and seasonally adjusted figures, and concludes they're being too conservative.

I now think that house prices will show a small rise in 2009, rather than the 5pc fall I predicted at the end of last year.

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In Friday's Times... Allsop auctioneer Gary Murphy talks of "urgency" among bidders, with some auctions, according to EIG data, shifting as much as 85% of listings. Savills are apparently selling 96% of their auction property above guide price, usually around 20% above.

Christopher Coleman-Smith, head of auctions at Savills, says: “Sentiment in the auction room has turned since October, November and December. A lack of supply is underpinning prices, with some lots seriously outperforming expectations.”

And now, here's ThisIsMoney, telling us the sealed bid is apparently back, and even using "the b-word".

Although the market has supposedly crashed, here in Middle England a housing bubble is making it impossible for us to buy a property at anything like a reasonable price.

What the....?

In Stratford, at least, the property-market plunge seems greatly exaggerated, with prices not far off those of 2007. We are now considering continuing to rent until the bubble bursts in the cold, short days of autumn.

Yes, indeed. All eyes on autumn.

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Hard to believe? Well that's the figure according to Hometrack. Asking prices are down 8.7% annually, after slowing for three consecutive months, with agreed sales rising, new stock falling.

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The May report shows house prices falling 0.2%, leaving the annual rate of decline at 15.9%, a light steadying on the 16.2% annual drop showed in April and March. Four English regions (including the south east) showed slight gains on the month, however transactions over the first quarter were still less than half where they'd been the year before... begging the question whether that upturn in enquiries reported by many agents in the new year has been translating into sales. Watch this space.

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... another big crash prediction from MoneyWeek.

House prices could fall another 40% from here.

The argument is both compelling and an old-chestnut. It's about affordability.

Today, the ratio, based on an assumed average household income of £31,200 and an average HBOS house price of £160,869 is still a very high 5.16 times. To give you an idea of just how high that is, it's still above the 1989 peak ratio of 5.02 times.

Remember, though, that homeownership is a relatively recent trend... comparatively rare until the post-war period. There's no reason to assume our current view of affordability - taken by averaging this limited data - will prove to be the long-term one. It's a good read, though, and recommended.

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Owning a house is not a prerequisite for economic maturity: many Germans never buy a property. And the idea that an Englishman's home is his castle has everything to do with his legal rights and nothing to do with owning the blasted place.

Edmund Conway has an entertaining rant in the Telegraph about the unsustainability of the British home-buying culture. The conclusions? 1) The Bank of England should control maximum loan-to-value ratios when it comes to mortgage lending. (But wouldn't that place more power into the hands of the cash-rich landlord class?) 2) Harsher home taxation, either in the form of a land tax, or by imposing capital gains tax to first homes. (What's the difference between Council Tax and a land tax? When would CG be payable? How wouldn't it stop people moving... and so damage the economy?) 3) Remove the stigma associated with renting. (Absolutely.)

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Madonna plans Wiltshire mansion duplicate in NY... yeah, that'll work [The London News]
The PM's Top Ten Financial Blunders [Times]
Up-and-coming... Dalston [Independent]
Thank God, it's business as usual in Prime London [Forbes]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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One in five threatened by negative equity [ITN News]
Buy the Stig's house... maybe [Daily Mail]
Victorian Society v Lewisham Borough Council [Culture 24]
Bargain hunting or profiteering? [UPAD blog]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog, since 2005

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Rightmove's June snapshot of asking prices shows a drop of 0.4%, with accompanying comment blaming an unhelpful mortgage market for failing to support a property recovery. There's also evidence of a very polarised market, driven by the equity rich, hunting well-located homes that are short in supply, at one end, properties requiring a lot of work at the other. There's evidence of some regional polarisation, too, with prices in the north west (England) rising by 4.5%.

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Property prices will rise by an average of 1.4% over the next year according to respondents to the BSA's Property Tracker survey, as cautious optimism returns to the housing market.

Hmm. A lot has happened since March, clearly, when the same people forecast a 6.1% fall. Accompanying comment correctly pinpoints job security as the most likely issue to pop this bubble.

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Nestoria's Ed Freyfogle chats to Renthusiast on third b'day (Nestoria's, not Freyfogle's, or Renthusiast's) [Renthusiast]
Disappointing lending figures [BBC]
Yorkshire Tea box cottage for sale [Telegraph]
Exclusion in the housing market [Times]
Job done on London architecture, Prince turns to rural house prices [Google]
Loving garages [Daily Mail]

The Rat and Mouse - London's property blog since 2005

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Sienna Miller's painful price-drop [ContactMusic]
Prince Charles' blow against creative architecture [Guardian]
Buy-to-let and the cannabis farmer tenants [Guardian]
House prices and the north/south divide [Times]
London flats on a (£175,000) shoestring [Telegraph]
Vendors feel they have the whip hand [Times]
The best ftb mortgages [Citywire]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

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To 1.1m homes, according to the Bank of England, and between 7% and 11% of UK homeowners. The Bank's research is based on a 20% fall from the peak of the market, leaving average prices at mid-1990s levels... so if you took out a proportionately large mortgage in the years since then, it might mean you. More here.

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