Special Report:Global Financial Crisis
LONDON, Jan. 2 (Chinese media) -- House prices in Britain
continue to decline and are currently at August 2004 levels, Halifax, the
country's largest mortgage lender and leading housing researcher, said Friday.
House prices fell by an additional 2.2 percent in
December 2008 after dropping 2.7 percent in November and 2.4 percent in October,
according to the latest data by Halifax.
The house prices saw a year-on-year decline of 18.9
percent in December, the sharpest decrease since records began in 1983.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England reported that
seasonally adjusted mortgage approvals for house purchases declined to 27,000in
November, the lowest level since records began in 1993.
The data showed that housing market activity and
house prices are still under severe downward pressures, said the economic
forecasting company IHS Global Insight.
Ongoing unfavorable fundamentals suggested that the
year 2009 is unlikely to be a happy new year for the housing sector, said Howard
Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.
He said there was a powerful set of negative factors
weighing on the housing market, including continuing tight credit conditions,
rising unemployment and widespread expectations that house prices are likely to
fall more.
IHS Global Insight predicted that house prices in
Britain will fall by an additional 15 percent in 2009.
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