British house prices registered the most widespread falls in 13 years last month as buyer demand and sales activity weakened more sharply than expected in the face of higher borrowing costs and the risk of a recession, a survey showed on Thursday.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) house price balance, which measures the difference between the percentage of surveyors seeing rises and falls in house prices, slumped to -42 in December from -26 the previous month.
December’s figure was the lowest since October 2010 and below the -30 that economists had forecast in a Reuters poll.