History reasserting itself

As I've said before, until the second quarter of 2009 (i.e. quarter 10), the current house price crash had been tracking the previous one very closely, then New Labour hurled everything they had at it, and managed to stall things for a year or so. As much as the Lib-Cons would love to continue propping up house prices, there is clearly not enough money to hurl at the banks to hurl at borrowers* so the pattern seems to be reasserting itself. Click to enlarge:

The blue series shows quarter-on-quarter price changes from Q1 1989 onwards; the red series shows quarter-on-quarter price changes from Q1 2007 onwards.

The post-1989 crash continued for another few years after the end of that chart, but rises and falls were no longer so spectacular - however, the forced increases during 2009 (which would have been decreases had history been allowed to run its course) will have to reverse at some stage in the future, so I would expect house price falls for the next few years to be far more noticeable than in the early 1990s.

Source: Nationwide's UK House prices adjusted for inflation (choose from the drop down box labelled 'UK series').

* The Lib-Cons are sticking with the old favourites, like depressing interest rates, which is merely a random transfer of £30 billion a year from 'savers' to 'borrowers' (with their chums at the banks being able to double their profit margins), and a complete block on any new development.