House prices barely changed last year, the Nationwide has reported.
They shifted up just 0.4% over the course of 2010, finishing at an average of £162,763.
The figure is almost exactly the same as the Land Registry price given for the month of November – £164,773.
Although Nationwide said that house prices crept up 0.4% in December, compared with November, the overall trend for the last part of the year was of modestly declining house prices.
Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide’s chief economist, said: “Despite December’s increase, house prices have fallen in four out of the last six months and it would be premature to suggest that the recent downward trend has been broken on the basis of one month’s figures.”
While forecasts for house prices vary slightly this year – some commentators think they will fall by up to 10%, whilst others think they could rise by up to 5% – it is sales volumes that remain the chief concern.
The Land Registry’s latest figures only go up to last September. In the months between June and September, transaction volumes averaged 60,979 per month. This was a slight increase over the 58,772 per month for the same period of 2009.
But with warnings that mortgages will become tighter this year, as Government lending targets are abolished and lenders set their own targets, transactions are unlikely to rise and could fall a little further.
Nationwide no longer predicts the housing market. The main forecasts for prices for 2011 are:
Savills: down 3%
Knight Frank: down 3.3%
Capital Economics: down 5%
Hamptons: no change
Hometrack: down 2%
Charcol: up 2%
Halifax: no change
Council of Mortgage Lenders: down 2%
