UK Property Market – April 2010 Update

I am still out of the UK residential property market although today I really am beginning to wonder why. It really is amazing what a government can achieve if they are prepared to sacrifice the country long term to keep a bubble afloat. Today the Nationwide reported that average house prices had risen from £164,519 to £167,802, a monthly rise of £3,283 or 2.0%. On an annualised basis house prices in absolute terms are up by 10.5% and if I look at real (after inflation) returns they are still up by 5.2%.

British Bankers Association reports on mortgage lending levels

The British Bankers Association (BBA) reported on mortgage lending levels for March yesterday. As regular readers will know I blog on mortgage lending levels monthly (last month here) however I use the Bank of England data which is currently only published up until February 2010.

US Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation – April 2010 Update

The above chart shows the US Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) to March 2010 courtesy of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Year on year US CPI inflation has risen from 2.1% in February 2010 to 2.3% today. Annualising the last 6 months has inflation at 1.5% and annualising the last 3 months has inflation running at 3.1%. Have the US government succeeded in kick starting some good ‘healthy’ inflation? Many developed countries around the world are in my opinion craving this to help them erode both their debts and those of their reckless population who gorged themselves on easy credit.

Gold Priced in British Pounds (GBP) – April 2010 Update

In absolute terms gold continues to climb in value reaching a new high today of £745.44 (when compared with the monthly historic dataset) since gold started its upward climb in 2005. In the last month gold is up £5.83 ounce however in real (inflation adjusted) terms as shown in today’s chart gold is actually going nowhere rising by only £0.77 per ounce.

Average UK Earnings – April 2010 Update

As we know inflation according to the retail prices index (RPI) year on year is currently running at 4.4%. Looking at historic RPI inflation data shows the average year on year RPI annual change since 1991 at 2.8% and the trendline since 1991 shows inflation year on year trending downwards. My chart today shows these RPI figures in blue.