Average asking prices in England and Wales fell 0.8 percent from December to 224,060 pounds ($343,400), the operator of Britain’s biggest property website said in a report in London today. In London, values gained 0.8 percent.

U.K. property prices may remain under pressure as unemployment rises and the turmoil in the euro region threatens to push the economy back into a recession. Mortgage approvals were little changed in November and banks expect to toughen lending terms in the first quarter because of strains in funding markets, according to the Bank of England.

“The market will remain challenging and fragmented during 2012,” Rightmove said in the report.

Buyers’ interest is growing, with the number of searches rising to a record in the first 10 days of 2012, even as demand is being held back by a “mortgage famine,” the company said. The number of property searches by people on Rightmove’s website rose 27 percent from a year earlier to more than 44 million, the highest since it was started in 2000.

The 36,433 properties put up for sale between Dec. 11 and Jan. 7, which Rightmove used to calculate its January asking- price data, indicates an average of less than one new listing per estate-agent outlet per week, the company said. That’s the slowest rate since Rightmove began keeping records 10 years ago and about half the pace seen before the credit crunch, it said.

Out of the 10 regions in England and Wales tracked by Rightmove, six posted declines this month, led by a 3.5 percent drop in southwest England. Excluding London (RMREGL), prices in the other nine areas fell an average of 1.5 percent from December.

From a year earlier, prices nationally rose 0.4 percent, the company said. In London, they surged 6.1 percent.

In London, the number of new listings fell to its lowest level in three years in the first week of January, an “early indication that a shortage of sellers and upwards price pressure will again feature in 2012,” Rightmove said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Hamilton in London at shamilton8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-16/u-k-house-prices-decline-for-third-month-at-start-of-challenging-2012.html

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