House prices fall in April

The Halifax announced that house prices fell by 0.8% in April after a very busy couple of months. It is too early really to read anything into that yet and many commentators are talking about property investors waiting to see what happens after the referendum. Also fundamentals are still strong in terms of employment, demand, low mortgage rates etc. so we really need a couple more months at at least to make any informed comment.

However it doesn’t hurt to think about what to do if house prices actually do continue to fall as this could impact you in different ways. If you are already highly geared (more than 75% LTV) then any fall in prices will make that situation worse. Initially speak with your mortgage broker to see what options there are in terms of mortgages at higher LTV. However also look at how you could increase the equity in your property. This could either be by putting some cash into your existing mortgage to bring it down or adding value to your property through a refurb or some form of extension. The benefit of the latter is that you should be able to add more value than you spend and therefore increase your equity even more.