U.K. house prices (UKNBAAMM) declined for the first time in four months in December and may drop in 2012, according to Nationwide Building Society.
The average cost of a home fell 0.2 percent from November to 163,822 pounds ($252,000), the Swindon, England-based customer-owned lender said in an e-mailed report today. From a year earlier, values were up 1 percent.
Next year “isn’t shaping up to be much better than 2011, for the U.K. economy or the housing market,” Nationwide Chief Economist Robert Gardner said in the report. “The housing market in 2012 looks likely to be characterized by low levels of activity once again, with prices moving sideways or modestly lower over the course of the year.”
Britain’s housing market has struggled to gain momentum as inflation and government spending cuts weaken consumer confidence and Europe’s debt crisis pushes up bank funding costs. Nationwide said the U.K. economy will probably grow less than 1 percent next year and labor-market conditions will “remain challenging,” crimping demand for housing.
The lender’s 2012 forecast tallies with other predictions of falling or stagnating U.K. house prices next year. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and property researcher Hometrack Ltd. said separately this month that values will fall about 3 percent in 2012. Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY)’s Halifax unit, Britain’s largest mortgage provider, said on Dec. 12 that it saw the cost of a home rising or falling by no more than 2 percent next year.
.......................................................
Australia Home Prices Drop 3.7% as Banks Doubt 2012 Rebound on Rate Cuts
Home prices in Australia’s eight capital cities slid 3.7 percent in the first 11 months of 2011, extending the biggest drop in at least 12 years on concerns Europe’s debt crisis may damp the nation’s economic growth.
Brisbane led the decline, slumping 7 percent in the January-November period, followed by Melbourne, which posted a 5.7 percent retreat, according to figures from RP Data, a real estate researcher.
“The downside risk would come from global weakness affecting the Australian economy,” said David Cannington, a Melbourne-based economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ), with A$161 billion ($164 billion) of mortgages as of November. “The housing market will, broadly speaking, reflect the relative strength or weakness of the Australian economy.”
