The Nationwide Building Society house price survey recorded the biggest year on year fall since they began collating data in 1991.
June saw house prices drop by over 8 percent compared with the same time last year, also down 1.7 percent compared with the previous month. In monetary terms the average property now costs GBP15,000 less than it did a year ago according to the Nationwide Building Society, something that can be seen as both good and bad. For first time buyers there is the chance to afford a house that was previously out of reach, but existing homeowners may not want to sell if they bought recently since they would lose money.
This latest drop makes nine consecutive months of price drops in the housing market, putting them at their lowest since the summer of 2006. The Nationwide Building Society are one of the key players in the mortgage market and are hopeful that things will turn around.
In what is understood to be a unique agreement, the IFS School of Finance has agreed to train and provide accreditation for all underwriting staff at Abbey National.
All underwriting staff will have a choice of two levels of training, Certificate or Diploma. The Certificate level course will be achieved in conjunction with the Abbey National certificate in underwriting and provide a customer services professional level qualification. The Diploma is more suited to those aiming for more senior roles and will involve the Applied Diploma in Corporate Banking.
These developments are sure to make the whole operation better in the future, leading to an improved experience for anyone buying an Abbey National mortgage or any form of insurance for which underwriting is needed.
Sales of property with values over GBP1 million went up by 36 percent in 2007 compared with the previous year according to Halifax data.
There were over 8,250 sales of million pound plus properties, with over three quarters of them being in the south east of England and London. The largest increase in sales of million pound properties was in Scotland, where the measured increase by the Halifax was 138 percent. This was followed closely by the north east of England, with a 136 percent increase.
The south east has always had strong property values, said a Halifax representative, so it is not surprising to see it heading the number of sales list. It is also notable that rising property prices nationwide have driven up these type of sales further afield.