House prices slipped this month from £211,671 in July to £210,495 in August.
Nationwide said this brought the annual rate of house price inflation down from 2.9% to 2.1%.
Robert Gardner, chief economist at Nationwide, said this was consistent with signs of cooling in the housing market and the wider economy.
Nationwide has also reported that Stamp Duty Land Tax revenues have hit an all-time high.
They reached £12.8bn in the 12 months to the end of the second quarter of this year, well above the £10.6bn peak of late 2007.
This was despite the fact that housing transactions were 30% lower than ten years ago.
However, house prices are now averaging 12% above their peak.
Nationwide also says that the 3% Stamp Duty surcharge on the purchase of second homes imposed in April 2016 is the other reason for the upswing: the levy accounted for 22% of total Stamp Duty Land Tax revenues in the last 12 months.
Surveyors can be blamed for this and I assume RICS has insisted they lower their valuations. Never mind the many comparables we can provide them with, we have had more downvaluations in the last four weeks than we had in the four years prior.
They’re fulfilling their own prophecy
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