UK housing recovery? maybe not

Posted on May 2, 2009 by peter 
Filed under UK Mortgage and Finance News · Tagged: ,

In March, the number of homes sold in the UK jumped by 40% from the previous month, (according to figures from HM Revenue & Customs). There were 60,000 property sales worth at least £40,000 each, compared with 43,000 in February. The figures seemed to indicate that the slump in home sales seen in the past 18 months may have been coming to an end. Even when the figures were adjusted for seasonal trends, they still showed a rise from 54,000 to 61,000, a jump of 13%.

house_prices_30_apr09However, come April and it was back to bad news. In April, UK House prices fell by 0.4%, reversing some of the rise seen in March, (according to data supplied by the the Nationwide).

The Nationwide’s figures show that the pace of decline in house prices slowed, but the typical home still cost 15% less than a year ago. The price of the average property in the UK was £151,861 in April.

Figures from the Land Registry relating to March, also published on Thursday, showed different price shifts in different parts of England and Wales. The figures suggested typical property prices rose by 1.8% in the North East of England in March compared with February, but fell by 2% in the same period in the West Midlands.

The Nationwides’s Figures showed that prices fell 3.1% in the quarter to the end of April, compared with the previous quarter.

This was less of a decline than than the 4.1% fall, using the same measure, seen a month ago.

The building society surprised many homeowners last month when it announced that prices rose by 0.9% in March compared with February.

But it warned at the time against reading too much into the change, saying that it was not a sign that the market had turned.

In a speech a week ago, Matthew Wyles, chairman of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), said that the mortgage market remained “highly dysfunctional” and that 2009 would be a tough year.