economonkey

If you’re waiting for this whole “property market slowdown” thing to blow over so you can sell your house/buy a house/stop lying in bed awake at night worrying about whether you’ll have to spend your retirement eating nothing but Asda own-brand catfood, don’t expect things to improve any time soon. The news just keeps getting bleaker.

According to the Nationwide, whose figures are seen as a benchmark for the UK property market, house prices dropped by 1.7% in September – which means we’re now just one month away from a full year of month on month price drops. Unless of course there’s a magical October spike in prices… This leaves the current average price of a UK home at £161,797, down 12.4% or approximately £20,000 compared to a year ago.

If you ask us, this is only the beginning – property is still grotesquely overpriced in the UK and we suspect it has a long way to fall before the market stabilises.

This is borne out by the findings of the Bank of England’s quarterly credit conditions survey, which shows that banks expect the housing market to get worse, more mortgage holders to default on their payments, and that most of the mortgage lenders plan to tighten their lending criteria even more over the next three months.

It’s going to be a cold, cold winter.