Home prices in the United Kingdom dropped ever so slightly year-over-year in June, the first annual drop since December 2012.
Pricing across the country was 0.1 percent lower last month than it was in June of 2019, according to a study by mortgage lender Nationwide Building Society and reported by the Guardian.
Prices fell by 1.7 percent from May to June, a more significant drop than the 1.4 percent seen in December 2012.
The flattening of prices is directly related to the coronavirus pandemic, said Nationwide’s chief economist Robert Gardner, who called the slowdown “unsurprising.”
Gardner predicts that activity will pick up but remain below pre-pandemic levels as lockdown measures are eased in the U.K.
Better performance in April and May appears to have buoyed the market on a quarterly basis — no region of the country saw pricing drop from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020. [The Guardian] — Dennis Lynch