'Once again John, you are the voice of reason in an otherwise unreasonable thread.'
I thought this was interesting considering how bad the economy is there and how high prices were.. I didn't expect prices to rise much anywhere for a couple of more years....Keep 'us' posted on NY metro.. Most of the USA outside of a few areas now appears to be as affordable as it has been in well over 40 years. I might need to adjust my strategy sooner than I thought...
'U.K. House Prices Rise at Fastest Pace Since 2007 (Update2)
April 08, 2010, 7:52 AM EDT
By Jennifer Ryan
April 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. house prices advanced in March at the fastest annual pace in 2 1/2 years as low interest rates boosted demand and a shortage of properties persisted, Halifax said.
The average cost of a home rose 6.9 percent from a year earlier to 168,521 pounds ($256,000), the mortgage lending division of Lloyds Banking Group Plc said in an e-mailed statement today in London. Prices increased 1.1 percent from February and are up 9.1 percent from a trough in April 2009.
U.K. banks expect demand for mortgages will increase in the second quarter as interest in housing revives, a Bank of England survey last week showed. The Bank of England held its bond- purchase plan today at 200 billion pounds and kept its key interest rate at a record low while it assesses the strength of the recovery and awaits the results of next month’s election.
“Interest rates are so low, that’s helping mortgage affordability and that’s helping to boost demand,” Martin Ellis, housing economist at Halifax, said in an interview. “At the same time, a supply squeeze is pushing up prices.”
On a quarterly basis, house-price growth slowed to 0.6 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter after a 3.6 percent increase in the final three months of 2009, Halifax said. Further price gains may be limited as more Britons offer properties for sale, and house price growth may be flat in 2010, Ellis said.
‘Out of Kilter’
“The overall significant house-price rises that have been seen since early 2009 are out of kilter with the overall economic fundamentals,” Howard Archer, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London, said in a research note. “The overall economic environment is still far from supportive for house prices while credit conditions remain pretty tight.”
Lenders granted 47,094 loans to buy homes in February, Bank of England data show. That’s up from a low of 26,600 at the trough of the financial crisis in November 2008, though still less than half the 120,000 reading at the peak of the boom.
A net 39.8 percent of lenders responding to the central bank’s credit conditions survey for the first quarter said demand for home loans will grow.
As well as maintaining the target for its asset-purchase plan, the Bank of England kept its key interest rate at 0.5 percent.
--Editors: Jennifer Freedman, Kevin Costelloe
businessweek.com |
