Average house prices in Britain rose 1 percent from March to April, pushing the average sale price 10.5 percent higher than a year earlier, a major mortgage lender said Thursday, according to AP. The Nationwide Building Society, Britain's No. 3 mortgage lender, said it was the first time since June 2007 that its index had shown a double-digit year-on-year increase. However, average prices still lag 10 percent below the peak reached in October 2007 and the market remains abnormally slow, the lender said. Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide's chief economist, noted that April 2009 had been one of the weaker months last year. He said a key driver of rising prices «has been the low level of stock for sale, as many homeowners and buy-to-let landlords continue to wait for prices to recover to peak 2007 levels before deciding to sell up or move.» Ed Stansfield, property economist at Capital Economics, said he believed prices would fall again in the second half of the year. «Although we cannot be certain, we suspect that April's figure might mark the peak for house price inflation this year,» Stansfield said. «The growing gap between house price inflation and average earnings growth seems unsustainable against a backdrop where the labor market has begun to weaken again and household incomes remain under strong downwards pressure,» he added.
