House prices fall (again) – but is it the time to buy?

House prices have fallen for the second month in a row, according to Nationwide – following wider predictions of a 9 per cent fall in the market. Nationwide’s house price index fell 1.4 per cent last month after falling 0.9 per cent the month before. That’s still up 4.4 per cent year-on-year but (pandemic excluded) it’s the first significant drop in property prices since the 2008 crash. Earlier this week, data from Zoopla suggested a 44 per cent drop in demand. The Bank of England, too, said mortgage approvals are at their lowest since June 2020.

Nationwide now puts the average house price at £263,788, nearly £4,500 less than in October. This is, it says, a basic function of the rising cost of borrowing (a worldwide trend, briefly exacerbated in the UK by the Truss debacle).