Tuesday 1 July 2008

In denial

House prices "have fallen 7.3% from their peak last October" says the Nationwide, in a rare fit of honesty.

But they also come out with the inevitable drivel like "... the strength of house price growth up until last year means that prices are still 4% higher than two years ago and 9% higher than three years ago."

I love the way that the time-frame keeps moving further into the past. Each month's fall is now wiping out two months' gains.

Update - if you look at Nationwide's real house price index (i.e. adjusted for RPI), we are already back to mid-2004 price levels (ignoring brief dip in first half 2005).

So the real gain over the past four years has been a BIG FAT ZERO.

2 comments:

M said...

Values have obviously slipped from peak, but there still doesn't appear to be much in the way of a crash. It looks more like people are simply hanging tight till things get better.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer says today "In 1968, when my late father-in-law...had to sell his two-flat on the West Side of Chicago because his children were suddenly getting mugged on the sidewalk, getting only a fraction of what it had been worth two years before..". I suppose that anyone who now gets social housing next to him will feel like that? And perhaps "social housing" will be the fate of many buy-to-let flats?