British Real Estate Prices Continue To Fall

London, England, Sept. 22, 2008--The U.S. isn't the only country with a housing downturn.

House prices in Britain fell for the fourth consecutive month in September, as the credit crisis continued to worsen and the country's largest mortgage lender was forced into a takeover, the property Web site Rightmove reported Monday.

Average house prices across the country fell 1 percent in September to $419,357. New listings per estate agent dropped to the lowest level for September that the index has ever recorded.

"The housing market is on its knees and will remain so until financial institutions address the disastrous state of the mortgage funding markets," said Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove. "We are now seeing the lowest level of new sellers for years."

Many of those selling now are being forced into making deals by death, divorce or debt, he added.

On Thursday, Britain's largest mortgage lender, HBOS PLC, was forced to sell itself to banking rival Lloyds TSB PLC amid a sharply falling stock price that had seen the company lose nearly 50 percent of its value since Monday.

Other recent housing data also indicates that the housing slump has gotten worse. Home sales fell to a 30-year low in August, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors on Sept. 9. At the same time, house prices fell at the fastest annual pace in a quarter century, HBOS said on Sept. 4.