Nationwide - July - 1.7% YOY -8.1%

ginvzt

Ok, you may call me what ever you want. I have downloaded Nationwide numbers last month (monthly changes), so that I can have them for my record and compare with Halifax myself. I downloaded them again today as the last months figure was revised. What I didn't expect was to see that not only the last months figure changed, but every single value since Jan 2005!!! I must be sleeping still and my brain is dead. Why would this happen? The correction is max -0.15% on previous value for October 2007 and +0.17% for July 2007, according to the vlaues I have downloaded...
Just needed to get it out...

Tassotti

The figures changed???

Hmm, it goes to show that you should keep an eye on sold prices in your own area, and make your own mind up.

Tass

obsessed_saver

Where's the video of the Nationwide spokeswoman?

MrDT

hahahahaha

“The price of a typical house fell by 1.7% in July, bringing the annual fall to 8.1%. This brings the average price to £169,316, almost £15,000 less than this time last year and its lowest level since August 2006. House prices have now been falling for nine consecutive months, but on average are still almost £11,000 higher than three
years ago."


The desperate hunt for some positive spin

ginvzt

So, if you bought your house in the last 2 years, you have already lost some money on it. If you have bought it 3 years ago - sell now and quick or you will loose your money too!!!

Is that what I am supposed to read in between the lines in that report?
And I want to buy a house...

kingkano

poppy10 wrote: »

Wow, this is major pwnage! Down 8.1% in a year, and accelerating. In the last crash the annual rate only reach -6.4%, and even that was only briefly.

Is that adjusted for inflation? Wasn't inflation like 10% back then?

Generali

kingkano wrote: »

Is that adjusted for inflation? Wasn't inflation like 10% back then?

I'm pretty sure that's nominal. Nominal prices didn't fall by that much across the country as a whole in either the early 1990s or the mid-70s as both were times of high inflation.

PasturesNew

I should change my f3ckin' tagline now:

STR: Not a loony then.

The trouble I had when I sold my house, I was saying "house prices will be falling, I have to get out NOW" ... and then afterwards, sat in my parents' living room and my sister came round and almost stopped speaking to me forever because I said I wasn't buying again (yet) and she was horrified that I'd miss my slot, I HAD to stay ON the "ladder".

I'm right. You're wrong. Ner, ner, ner, ner, ner. Now stop treating me like the family loony.

kingkano

Generali wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that's nominal. Nominal prices didn't fall by that much across the country as a whole in either the early 1990s or the mid-70s as both were times of high inflation.

So whether its as bad/worse OR not, is down to what you think inflation is now Use any government figures and its not as bad this time. If you really think inflation is 8 or 10% then it's looking similar....

Then again is their worse to come when recession really hits? Or are people already in recession mindset considering the figures we are seeing.

rjgb

I realise there are some flaws in my reasoning below since, as Generali says above, the rate of annual price change will flatten out as we'll be comparing a falling month this year with a falling month last year. But bear with me. Amongst other things, my reasoning appears to result in the same prediction as Generali.


Check out the graph at the top of Page 2 of Nationwide's report from June (i.e. not this month's report, but the previous one):

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/historical/June_2008.pdf

You can generally see that the red line (Annual Price Change) follows the trend of the blue line (Approvals) with a few months' delay. This makes sense I suppose, as if approvals decline then house prices will decline as a result.

The thing that caught my eye was at the right hand end of the graph. The number of approvals has been reducing since a (recent) peak in about Oct 2006. Annual price change has been falling since a (recent) peak in about March 2007. So there is about a 5-month latency period.

Approvals have now (June 2008) dropped to just 36,000, i.e. towards the very bottom of the Y-axis of the graph. So, the Annual Price Change should follow this trend and by November 2008 (i.e. add 5-months) be at around -16%.

So, my first prediction is that in November the average house price will be about £155,000. :j

It is very unlikely that approvals wil fall a great deal lower than 36,000, since that is nearly zero in the grand scale of things. Even if the number of approvals falls to around 10,000 in the next two months or so, then this will be represented in the graph as a "levelling-out" of the blue line. 5 months after that, there would be a levelling-out of the red line in the next seven months or so.

So, my second prediction is that prices will level out in about April 2009.

Thus, to avoid the rush to jump onto the ladder that could onset in April/May 2009, it could be best to try and buy at the very end of 2008, or very early 2009.