Property prices fallen by around 20%
The Nationwide and Halifax building societies are both stating that the average prices of property in the UK has fallen from around £200,000 to around £159,000 or about 20%.
The CEBR (or Centre for Economics and Business Research) is predicting that we will lose the same again before the downturn is over. They also predict that prices will bottom out during 1009 and start to rise in the 12 months after that. Prices will return to previous levels in around 2013.
This is quite a pessimistic view, many insiders are stating that we might see significant improvement during early 2010. It’s fair to say that for the price increases we say in the early/part of this decade we could have to wait much longer than that-but to be fair we all realise that was artificial and could not be sustained. For the economy to get back on its feet and jobs to start to appear again it will take much longer.
I think we all agree that while property prices are an important indicator of what is happening, jobs and the general economy are our bread and butter. However people who are retiring this year will be worried, Gordon Brown encouraged us to take out personal pensions just a year ago and now these people dont have the working time to replace this cash. Retire at 65? More people will have to work longer to pay for this mess..apart from young people who cant open businesses due to the lack of loans being granted.