The Land Registry and the NHF have both released new studies, looking in to house price trends.
House prices declined by a further one percent last month, new figures from the Land Registry show.
This means that the annual rate of increase in England and Wales has now been dragged down to 0.1 percent. The average property cost stands at £180,781, according to the survey.
The Land Registry figures are markedly more positive than latest UK-wide surveys from lenders Halifax and Nationwide - both of which have tracked annual house price declines exceeding six per cent. This is because, unlike in other studies, Land Registry figures are based on prices at the completion of sales - which means they tend to lag behind trends marked elsewhere.
Therefore, bigger falls are expected to be marked in months to come from the Land Registry, in line with the lenders' surveys.
News of the figures comes as the National Housing Federation (NHF) released a new set of future predictions for the property market. The body said that prices would fall by 4.4 percent this year and would suffer a further 2.1 percent drop in 2009, before turning the corner in 2010 with the end of the credit crunch.
Eventually, the NHF predicts, prices will rise by nine percent in 2012 and 2013. "As soon as the economic outlook improves, house prices will resume their previous upward trajectory," NHF chief executive David Orr commented.
