House prices to stop falling by September

The group of property investment advisers has predicted an end to house price falls in September after seeing signs of softening reductions in its House Price Watch.

The Assetz House Price Watch is an amalgamation of the five major UK house price indices, The Financial Times House Price Index, Rightmove, Nationwide, Halifax and the CLG (Communities and Local Government).

Although the average rate of monthly decline recorded by the Assetz House Price Watch dropped to below 1 per cent in the first two months of the year, the company believes a greater indictor of the softening of price falls is apparent in the annualised data.

According to Assetz, the annualised figures taken from all the major indices show a smoother picture, and indicate a trend of price falls beginning to reduce significantly.

The report found that three and six month moving averages across the major indices have revealed an upturn in the annualised rate of growth since December 2008, and data from the first two months of 2009 represents an annualised fall of just 6.8 per cent even after seasonal adjustments in many of the indices.

Stuart Law, chief executive of Assetz, said: "Taking average data from all of the UK indices, as well as recording three and six month moving averages, offers a far smoother and more reliable representation of the market. Significantly, it avoids the erratic movements recorded by individual indices over the last two months.

"The low falls recorded at the start of 2009, along with the reported increase in prospective buyers, the historically low interest rates and the early signs of increased lending, are all beginning to have an effect. Our best estimate of when prices will actually stop falling is currently September 2009."