House prices in the UK will fall by nearly 8 percent next year, the Lloyds Banking Group has predicted.
According to the bank, house prices will fall by 7.9 percent over the next year, with its worst-case model assuming a crash of 17.9 percent.
Prices of commercial properties are expected to fall by a much larger margin. Under the bank’s base case scenario, commercial property prices are forecast to drop by 14.4 percent, with a slump of 35.7 percent predicted in its worst case.
A cash machine at a Lloyds Bank branch in central London, Britain, on Feb. 25, 2016. (Paul Hackett/Reuters)
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns the Halifax brand, is the UK’s biggest lender. It announced that its statutory pre-tax profits were £1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) in the third quarter, which was over 25 percent lower than the £2 billion reported last year….