A cautious hat in the ring for house prices

25 January 2010

Maybe it’s this cold snap seeping into my weary mind - even Scotsmen feel it - but I can’t help be a little flummoxed sometimes by the growing number of house price indices and statistics that are thrust upon us.

The latest of these that caught my eye was one produced by Acadametrics, which incidentally claims to produce the only index based on actual transaction prices rather than valuations or asking prices.

Among its findings was the fact that the average house price in December 2009 had risen to £214,283, the same as it was in December three years previously.

Now, rightly or wrongly, this made me cast my mind back to those heady days of 2006 with a contrasting degree of joy and dejection.

But while these figures appear to show we’ve come full circle in terms of house prices, the years have left a massive impact on the world of financial services, not to mention the effects on the wallets, waistlines and hair colouring/ number of follicles for most of the intermediary market.

But a new year provides a new dawn and as I’ve said previously, hopefully a slow and steady year.

So with that in mind throwing our hat into the ring in terms of house price predictions for 2010, Barclays is looking for house price inflation of less than 5%.

This may be erring on the cautious side but caution is not a bad word to keep in mind in these prolonged challenging times.

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