"average UK home now costs £168,176, nearly £30,000 less than a year ago. "

[Upwind]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7712590.stm

"When simply comparing the average price in October with the average price a year ago, the Halifax survey suggests that prices are down by 15%..."

"The house price to average earnings ratio has fallen below 5.0 for the first time for four and a half years... We expect a further improvement in the ratio over the coming months. "

Good.

Sgree that it is good news for the UK as a whole but it is an utter shame that they were allowed to get so out of control. There will be lots of people trapped in negative equity.

Too many people, too few homes. Houses in Britain will always bee too expensive while this continues. Having said that, giving people mortgages who couldn't afford the repayments was a scandal and shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but then people shouldn't have taken the mortgages out in the first place knowing they couldn't make the repayments.

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means nowt to me.

that's still too much money.

i couldn't care less at this point what house prices are doing and whom they're doing it to.

may as well be talking about shares for land on the moon.

Callisto - nobody likes to acknowledge that though. It leads to unpleasant questions about either controlling immigration or building on the greenbelt.

christiana they can only do that two more times...

'Bank has jsut announced 1.5% cut inrates to 3%. That's huge. '

and could prove to be extremely stupid with regards to rising inflation.

all to keep house prices artificially high?

whatever.

sounds false economy to me.

but i know nothing.

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Could it really arrest the fall in house prices though?

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Average income is about 26 or 27K isn't it?

So the average person would have to borrow 6 or 7 times their income to afford an average house.

And that's in a financial catastrophe.

Ludicrous.

we need a 4 bed bungalow. Currently a squillion pounds. Hope they come down.

Glad to see house price correction being reported positively, as an improvement in the price/salary ratio.

Of course it sucks badly for people caught in negative equity, or needing to move but not being able to, but the readjustment HAS to happen.

It had to happen. I feel for people who have bought recently (last year or so) and overstretched themselves, but it couldn't go on. As it is, I think that our house will soon only be worth what we paid for it.

But if we had rented for the past few years the money would be gone anyway.

so agree HF

and no political interest in having one

all the debate is based on owning

That would be because so many of our politicians are heavily in to buy-to-let

hanaflower - we made the probably bad decision to get a mortgage for our tiny little flat rather than continue to rent and even though it is interest only i still think it was the right one at the time. It might be extremely tight but at least we know whether the mortgage payments have been made rather than finding out one day that we are homeless as the landlord hasn't been paying his mortgage.