Nationwide: House prices continue to fall in August

Here's their August house price index, a few days early. There's been a bit of mucking about with seasonal adjustments - the August figure on page 3 is actually 2.75% lower than the July figure, not 1.9% as headlined. Evan Davis skewered Fionnuala Earley (Nationwide 'economist') most gloriously on the BBC.

So, let's divide the August average by the February average = 0.9175. Assuming prices continue to fall at this rate, the non-inflation/deflation adjusted total falls from February 2008 (at which stage prices were already down 2.5% from August 2007) will be:
By February 2009 - down 16%
By February 2010 - down 29%
By February 2011 - down 40%
By February 2012 - down 50%.
(enter 0.9175 on your calculator, press the x key twice and keep pressing the = key).

Next question; how long will it be before prices bottom out again? Going by Nationwide's non-inflation adjusted figures, the peak of the last bubble was in 1989Q3 and the bottom in 1993Q1 = three and a half years, with another three years flatlining before it started going mad again. So on this basis, the overall fall from August 2007 to February 2011 would be about 42%, which is pretty much what the wisdom of crowds says.

Hmm. We'll see.