First, to all U.K. readers I want to properly and whole heartedly welcome you the housing malaise!How’s that for an U.S. export! Take that you Redcoats!
Recently, the two most prominent and long running monthly U.K. housing price indices registered the largest year-over-year declines in at least 15 years.
The “Nationwide” series, which reported data through May indicated that U.K. home prices declined 4.4% on a year-over-year basis while the “Halifax” series, which reported data through April indicated that U.K. home prices declined 3.68% on a year-over-year basis.
Both indices are similar to our own S&P/Case-Shiller data series in that they both implement a methodology that seeks to standardize the quality homes included as source data and track the price changes occurring between sales instead of simply tracking the distorted average or median sales price.
The following charts (click for larger) show the price movement since 1991 to each index.
Notice that annual price appreciation peaked in 2003 and continued to weaken consistently until early 2008 when it actually evolved into annual depreciation.
