Thursday, October 07, 2010

U.K. Home Prices: Halifax and Nationwide September 2010

The latest release of the two most prominent home price indices for the United Kingdom are signaling that the recent up-trend seen in U.K. home prices may be drawing to a close.

The “Nationwide” series, indicated that U.K. home prices stayed flat since August remaining just 3.05% above the level seen last year while the “Halifax” series declined a whopping 2.47% since August registering the first year-over-year decline in 11 consecutive months dropping 0.50% below the level seen in September 2009.

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 chart (click for full-screen dynamic chart) show the price movement since 1991 to each index.