Av erage home slides to £160,327

Mar 6 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post

House prices resumed their downward trend last month, dropping by 2.3 per cent, according to Britain’s biggest mortgage lender.

The slide, which more than wiped out the two per cent rise in January, left the average home in the UK costing £160,327, Halifax said.

It also helped to push up the annual rate at which prices are falling to a new high of 17.7 per cent – based on the group’s preferred measure of comparing prices during the previous three months with the same period a year earlier.

Economists had cautioned against reading too much into the surprise two per cent rise Halifax reported for January.

Halifax’s figures are in line with ones reported by Nationwide for February, which showed prices dropping by 1.8 per cent, while the annual rate of decline increased to 17.6 per cent.

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “The very sharp 2.3 per cent month-on-month fall in house prices in February reported by the Halifax confirms that the unexpected two per cent rise in January was an anomaly and house prices remain very much on a downward track.”

House prices have fallen back to a level last seen in August 2004.