The typical UK property has fallen by £7,000 since last summer to £286,896, according to Halifax, and the slide could now accelerate as a global house price crash gathers force.
Prices in prime city locations have now fallen for the first time since 2009, according to a new report by property specialist Knight Frank.
Prices fell 0.4 percent over the 12 months to March 31 but some cities have taken a real battering.
In Wellington, New Zealand, prices have crashed by a staggering 27.2 percent, with Auckland falling 17 percent and Christchurch down 15.3 percent.
The house price slump has spread to Europe, with prices in the German city of Frankfurt down 11.1 percent. In Swedish capital Stockholm they have plunged 11 percent.
San Francisco in California, Vancouver in Canada and Seoul in South Korea have all registered drops of nine percent or more over the last year.
Prices also fell sharply in the Chinese city of Shenzhen and Monaco. Taipei in Taiwan, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles and Brisbane, Australia, also ended the year lower.
Knight Frank said the sell-off had been driven by rising interest rates and warned of “continued downward pressure on prices for the next few quarters”.
Pressure will only ease after the US Federal Reserve and other central bankers stop hiking rates, but policymakers in the US, Europe and UK are bent on increasing rates instead.
At midday today, the Bank of England is expected to increase interest rates for the 12th time in a row, from 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent.
This will heap more pressure on hard-up homeowners with variable rate or tracker mortgages, as their payment rates will increase almost immediately.
Borrowers on fixed rates have more protection but face a payment shock when their deals expire, warned Paula Higgins, chief executive of the HomeOwners Alliance.
“Fixed mortgage rates now charge an average of 5.28 percent for two-year deals and five percent for five-year deals, Moneyfacts figures show.”
When deals expire, lenders automatically place customers onto their standard variable rate (SVR), and these are even more expensive. “Many SVRs now charge around eight percent, even before the latest BoE increase.”
Higgins is urging homeowners to pull out their mortgage paperwork to check what deal they’re on and how much they’re paying. “Otherwise you could be spending hundreds of pounds more every month than you need to.”
Some property analysts have seen Skipton Building Society’s decision to launch a 100 percent mortgage for first-time buyers as a risky move given today’s uncertainty.
Zero-deposit mortgages helped trigger the property meltdown in the wake of the financial crisis, although mortgage brokers insist Skipton’s deal contains enough safeguards to prevent a repeat.
READ MORE: Stark warning of ‘negative equity risk’ with new 100% mortgages
The Bank of England is fire for plans to hike base rates today. Top economists say a “sharp reduction” in the money supply suggests inflation will come under control without further action.
The Institute of Economic Affairs said today’s hike would be a mistake due to “the UK’s fragile economy, easing supply chain pressures and recent bank failures”.
The IEA warned that higher interest rates and monetary tightening, particularly in the US, drove the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
The IEA’s Trevor Williams, a former chief economist at Lloyds Bank, said a further interest rate rise is unnecessary as the MPC’s own official forecast indicates that inflation will significantly undershoot its two percent target in two years.
It could also do serious damage to the UK’s economy, Williams added. “The Bank of England allowed inflation to get out of control by being too slow to raise interest rates. It is now making the opposite mistake.”
Not every prime global city is falling in value, with certain boltholes proving popular among buyers.
Prices in Dubai rocketed 44.2 percent, with Miami up 11 percent and Zurich up 9.4 percent. However, London was not among them, with prices creeping up by 0.5 percent.
Britons now face an anxious wait to see whether the gathering property storm will sweep the UK market too, arguably with the Bank of England’s help.
