House price crash the worst since the war

For months we’ve been hearing that however bad it may be with Brown, it was worse under Major. But new house price data from the Halifax shows that this is not the case. House prices have declined more sharply than at any time since 1983. Prices have dropped 8.7 percent year on year, 8.5 percent in the last six months and 5.9 percent in the last three months. So Brown has already broken Major’s unwanted record on house prices, as well as sterling depreciation.

The quarterly house price data, which started in 1955 never showed significant downturns. And real estate rose steadily in the post-war years. The razor-sharp Michael Saunders from Citibank concludes today that:

“The recent decline in house prices is probably already the greatest for over 50 years. The severity of the plunge in house prices reflects the scale of the problems for the housing market from high debts, over-inflated property values, rising unemployment and credit crunch.