Are house prices on the rise or falling - does any one know?

Last week both the Nationwide Building Society and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors suggested that UK house prices may end 2009 higher than they started it.

However in a direct challange to that observation, the Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts that the house prices will fall a further 3% this year and may slightly recover, by up to 2%, in 2010.

This is not the only consultancy who has come up with this gloomy prediction for the house prices. But it is the latest.

The main reason given for the further falls in prices is rising unemployment and weak wage growth.

"The key question now is the extent to which rising unemployment and weak wage growth will lead to a second wave of house price falls, or whether this has already been built in to existing expectations," says Benjamin Williamson of Centre for Economics and Business Research.

"Our view is that the extent of house price falls already seen means further significant falls are unlikely."

This means that from their peak in the third quarter of 2007 to a predicted trough in the first three months of 2010, prices would have fallen by 24%.

Damn statistics...
There has been a flurry of statistics over the house prices lately. Optimists have predicted a price rise of 5% this year because of the 'shortage of homes built during the recession which would cause supply to be tight and support an upturn' to a drop of 10%, according to Capital Economics.

Even experts do not know anything for sure. So make up your mind...