Key Statistics: 19th February 2013

Construction

• According to RICS house prices fell in January, their house price balance fell to -4 in January after a milder -1 in December as more estate agents reported falling house prices for the period. Despite this Peter Bolton King RICS residential director added, "While it is still very early days to talk about a comprehensive market recovery, activity levels are still encouraging and there is some optimism out there that things could continue to improve."
• London remained the national hotspot for house price increases but rises in the South East and Wales were also recorded. 
• New buyer enquiries also fell with RICS agents reporting a -9 net balance.
• Official Statistics reported that house prices in the UK for the year to December were up 3.3%. Prices were up across all UK regions apart from Northern Ireland where they fell nearly 6% for the period, London and the South East saw the largest gains.

UK Economy

• The Bank of England released its first inflation report of the year last week, Governor King said that the recovery will continue to be slow and that growth would not return to pre-crisis levels until 2015. Inflation would continue to be above target for the almost three more years and is like to shoot above 3% again later this year before dropping back to target around 2016.
• Inflation remained the same in January as it has been in the past four months at 2.7% annual increase, the longest period CPI inflation has remained constant.
• Upward pressures came from alcohol, as prices recovered from Christmas sales and air fares. Clothing and miscellaneous goods provided the largest downward pressures.
• Official Statistics reported that the volume of retail sales in January fell by 0.6% compared to January last year, putting a halt to the year on year growth seen in this measure of consumer spending since August 2011.
• Heavy snowfall is being blamed for the lacklustre performance as smaller stores reported worse activity than larger stores.
• Producer prices measured by the output price index for home sales of manufactured products rose 2% in January compared to January last year.