House prices blog

The latest unemployment data from the ONS (published on 12 August 2009) does not make for happy reading:

“The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent for the three months to June 2009, up 0.7 over the previous quarter and up 2.4 over the year. The number of unemployed people increased by 220,000 over the quarter and by 750,000 over the year, to reach 2.43 million.”

Let us hope that unemployment is truly the lagging indicator (i.e. the last indicator to start improving as we come out of recession) and that it will turn the corner in the not too distant future.  If this doesn’t happen the impact on house price recovery will be obvious.

It looks like the rate of house price decline has now slowed down considerably.  In a year’s time we may even see an annual increase.  That is unless we experience a ‘double dip’ recession and prices start falling again.  A key indicator is unemployment data.  What are your thoughts.