The Nationwide Building Society has just announced cuts to its range of fixed rate and tracker mortgage products.
Applicable from 9 July the Nationwide Building Society 2 year tracker mortgages will have an interest rate of just 5.78 percent, with a fee of GBP1,499 payable. The 2 year fixed rate mortgages will have their rates confirmed shortly, since they were unavailable at the time of writing.
A spokesman from the Nationwide Building Society declared these cuts as indicating how committed they are to supporting the housing market, and their customers. The Nationwide is open for business he said.
The regular Halifax house price report has shown that, in the year to June, property prices have fallen by 6.1 percent.
The forecast by the Halifax for the rest of the year is a fall over the 12 month period of around 9 percent. At the moment property prices are at similar levels to August 2006 though further drops will take values to earlier dates than that.
The chief economist from the Halifax felt that the current situation, with strong employment meant that the future could be alright for property prices, though were a recession to hit the UK this could very quickly change.
The Halifax House Price Index for April showed a large fall of 1.3 percent, a significant fall in the period of just one month.
Predicting the state of the housing market for the rest of the year the Halifax anticipate an overall fall that will be less than 10 percent, though there will be large differences in this depending on where in the country they are. They expect prices to actually go up in Scotland for example, though houses in the West Midlands and Wales are forecast to see heavier than average price falls.
A Halifax spokesman suggested that the falling prices should be seen against their recent history of strong price rises for several years. In this context house prices can still be seen to be very strong compared with the long term trends.
