David Prosser: Housing market faces another miserable year as buyers and sellers retreat - Business Comment, Business - The Independent

David Prosser: Housing market faces another miserable year as buyers and sellers retreat - Business Comment, Business - The Independent

Outlook: There are now so many house price indices – not to mention a campaign for the launch of a better official yardstick from the Office of National Statistics – that it can sometimes be difficult to make out a clear picture of what is going on in the housing market. This, however, is not one of those times; and unfortunately the picture is unremittingly grim.

The 0.9 per cent fall in house prices for February that Halifax revealed yesterday takes theannual decline to around 2.8 per cent. Is there any chance of these declines tailing off? Not unless something unexpected happens to Britain's economy.

We know that the decline is not going to be arrested in the next few months because we already have data on demand and supply right now. Surveyors say that whilesupply is tightening, with fewer new instructions from sellers, demand is constricting more quickly, with buyers ever thinner on the ground. Approvals of mortgages – which, by the way, are already more expensive than they were in 2010 – remain stagnant.