Stock markets at record levels, but UK house prices fall – business live

All the day’s economic and financial news, as investor optimism drives shares higher in Asia and Europe

Halifax also reports that house price buyers, and sellers, are in short supply:

New buyer enquiries appeared a little more stable over the month having declined sharply in autumn, this measure, however, has now fallen for the last eight months.

Turning to supply, new instructions to sell continued to deteriorate at the headline level and has now fallen for 22 consecutive months – the worst sequence for close to eight years.

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UK house prices fell by 0.6% in December, according to the latest survey from Halifax bank.

It’s the first monthly decline since last June, and the latest signal that Britain’s property market is weakening.

“As we’d anticipated, the housing market in 2017 followed a similar pattern to the previous year. House price growth slowed, whilst building activity, completed sales and mortgage approvals for house purchase all remained flat.

This has been driven by a squeeze on real wage growth and continuing uncertainty over the economy. “However, nationally house prices in 2018 are likely to be supported by the ongoing shortage of properties for sale, low levels of housebuilding, high employment and a continuation of low interest rates making mortgage servicing affordable in relative terms. Overall we expect annual price growth to continue in the range of 0-3% at the end 2018.”

House Price Index, UK
m/m Dec-17: -0.6pc (prev: 0.5pc)
3m/y/y Dec-17: 2.7pc (prev: 3.9pc)
(The Halifax) pic.twitter.com/F91qAP4xRr

Another sign of UK house prices turning south? Halifax ” house prices in December fell by 0.6%; the first monthly decline in six months.”

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