House prices actually rise in November

House prices increased to the highest in more than two years in November as the market showed signs of reaching a peak, research company Acadametrics Ltd. said in an estimate released today.

The average price of a home in England and Wales climbed for a seventh month, gaining 0.2 percent to 224,758 pounds ($354,200), the groups said in an e-mailed report today. Values rose 5.9 percent from a year earlier and are now at the highest since June 2008.

Acadametrics’s estimate of increases in recent months has contrasted with data from mortgage lenders including Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s Halifax division, which said yesterday that prices fell 0.1 percent. With banks unlikely to loosen lending criteria in the medium term and a possible increase in interest rates to combat inflation next year, housing market values may soon come under pressure, the report said.

The Acadametrics report showed the number of transactions dropped 4.6 percent from October. That’s a decline of 5.3 percent from a year earlier.
Values in London rose 0.5 percent to 383,243 pounds in October, the month with the latest available regional data, while the biggest price drop was in East Anglia, where values fell 0.6 percent.

‘Flat Market’
“Overall, 2010 has seen a flat market, but one with some significant regional and local variations of which buyers and sellers need to be aware,” Acadametrics Chairman Peter Williams said in the report. “Going forward, we expect to see a similar pattern in 2011.”

Acadametrics combines initial housing transaction data from the U.K. Land Registry and results from other price measures to produce an estimate for the most recent month for its index. That number is then revised in following months.

The Bank of England yesterday kept its emergency stimulus program unchanged after recent data suggested the economy may be strong enough to weather the government’s spending cuts, undermining the case for more aid. Policy makers held their bond-purchase plan at 200 billion pounds and their main interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent.