Property prices slump again
Updated on 29 February 2008
House prices fell for the fourth month in a row during February, dropping by 0.5%, Britain's biggest building society has said.
The fall helped pull the annual rate of price growth down to just 2.7%, its lowest level since November 2005, and well down on January's figure of 4.2%.
Nationwide said it was the first time since 2000 that house prices had fallen for four months in a row.
But despite the slide, the average home in the UK is still worth £179,358, having gained around £12.75 a day during the past year.
Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's chief economist, said: "The trend in prices is clearly weakening, but the size of the drop in the annual rate between January and February perhaps overstates the rate of cooling, as it partly reflects the particularly strong increase in prices in February last year.
"The three-month on three-month rate of price growth rate fell to minus 1% in February, down from minus 0.4% the previous month."
The Nationwide data, which shows house prices to have fallen by 2.3% since the beginning of November, is considerably more gloomy than some other recent indexes have been.
The Land Registry said house prices in England and Wales rose by 0.9% during January.
Property website Rightmove recently said prices in England and Wales surged ahead by 3.2% during the four weeks to February 6, although the group cautioned against reading too much into the rise, saying it was likely to have been distorted by the final roll-out of the controversial Home Information Packs.
But property information group Hometrack said house prices in England and Wales fell for the fifth month in a row during February, while annual house price growth dropped to just 1.4%.
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