House prices ‘to reduce by 25%’

Graham Beale’s forecast for the housing market

The chief executive of the Nationwide Building Society has told BBC News that he thinks house prices could fall as much as 25% from their peak.

This prediction implies that 2.5 million homeowners could be pushed into negative equity. Graham Beale also said he does not expect to see signs of recovery in the housing market until 2010. Nationwide is by far the UK’s biggest building society and is closer to the housing market than many others.  Over the course of the business cycle it provides slightly fewer than one in ten of all the mortgages in the UK – though its recent share of new home loans has been a bit less.

So Nationwide’s chief executive, Graham Beale, carries weight when prognosticating. Read more …

By Robert Peston
BBC business editor

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