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Nationwide: Prices fall by 0.5%

House prices fell by 0.5 per cent this month, the UK's fourth-biggest mortgage lender Nationwide said today.

The home loans provider said that the average British property now cost just under £180,000 - and the annual rate of house price inflation has been pegged back to 2.7 per cent.

Chief economist at Nationwide Fionnuala Earley said: "This is the fourth consecutive monthly fall in house prices and brings the annual rate of house price inflation to its lowest since November 2005.

"The trend in prices is clearly weakening, but the size of the drop in the annual rate between January and February perhaps overstates the rate of cooling as it partly reflects the particularly strong increase in prices in February last year."

Nationwide's figures show a slightly sharper decline than a similar study from Hometrack released earlier in the week, which pegged the overall fall at 0.2 per cent for England and Wales.

However, this disparity could be explained by the fact that the new study covers the UK as a whole.

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