Recent figures have shown that property prices fell for a sixteenth month in a row in January.

House prices have been plummeting for the last year and a half, with homeowners seeing thousands of pounds worth of equity being wiped of the value of their homes.

According to reports there was a further 1 percent fall in property values on property during the months of January, with Hometrack reporting that the average property price has dropped by around 9.4 percent over the past twelve months.

However, lending levels for the month of December were up according to the report, and one leading economist from Global Insight stated: ‘Mortgage approvals were still at exceptionally low levels by historical norms in December, so the best that can really be said is that activity may be stabilising at an extremely muted level. To be honest, mortgage approvals were so low in November that there had to be a rise in December.’

According to officials from the British Bankers Association the activity seen in December with both lenders and borrowers was affected by the series of base interest rate cuts that took place between October and January, taking the base rate down to the lowest level on record, which is 1.5 percent.

Figures also show that whilst lending levels saw a slight increase of the month of December, major High Street banks only advanced a total of around £170 billions over the course of last year by way of mortgages, and this reflected a drop of around 23 percent compared to the figure recorded for 2007.

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