House prices fell in March. Here’s why that shouldn’t surprise us
The IndependentAfter showing some modest signs of life, Britain’s maddening housing market decided to resume its sulk in March. The Nationwide Building Society’s latest index showed a modest year-on-year rise of 1.6 per cent but a seasonally adjusted month-on-month fall of 0.2 per cent when compared to February’s prices. The latest positive news came from the British Retail Consortium, which said that shop price inflation had almost halved, to just 1.3 per cent from 2.5 per cent, the lowest since December 2021. Back in June 2021, when inflation was ticking up but before the BoE began its 14 consecutive interest rate rises, the two-year average was just 2.59 per cent while the five-year was 2.82 per cent. Let’s consider Nationwide’s average house price of £261,142 and a first-time buyer taking out a mortgage for 90 per cent of that amount designed to repay capital as well as the interest.