Annual UK house-price growth slowed to 0.5% in October from 0.8% in September, according to Nationwide’s official figures. The average non-seasonally-adjusted price was £273,566, compared with £274,251 in September, while prices were flat month on month after seasonal adjustment.
In his comments on the October figures, Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said the annual growth rate was the weakest since January 2024. That makes October’s figure a further easing in the pace of annual price growth, but not an annual decline: the reported change remained above zero.
The distinction matters because a slower rate of growth is different from a fall in prices. The annual measure still indicated prices above their level a year earlier, even though the increase was smaller than the annual rise reported for September.
Annual growth and monthly movement
The annual and monthly figures describe different comparisons. October’s annual rate measures change against the same month a year earlier; the monthly reading compares October with September. A weakening annual rate can therefore sit alongside a flat monthly result without the two measures being contradictory.
Nationwide’s October table gave the seasonally adjusted monthly change as -0.0%. Gardner described prices as flat month on month after seasonal adjustment. That table entry should be read alongside his description, rather than the minus sign being used on its own to characterise October as a month of falling prices.
Seasonal adjustment is also an important qualification to the monthly reading. The flat result applies to that adjusted measure, rather than to a direct comparison of the two average prices printed in the table. Those averages were explicitly reported on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis.
Reading the figures together, the clearest description is of weaker annual growth and no month-on-month change on the seasonally adjusted measure. It would be inaccurate to describe the 0.5% figure as a monthly increase, or to say the annual index had moved into decline.
Why the average prices differ
The average price listed for October was lower than the September average. Both are non-seasonally-adjusted figures, so that comparison should be kept separate from the seasonally adjusted monthly result. The lower quoted average and the flat adjusted reading are different parts of the same release.
In particular, the movement from £274,251 to £273,566 is not the calculation represented by the published -0.0% monthly change. Treating those cash figures as though they were seasonally adjusted would blur the distinction Nationwide makes between its average price and its monthly measure.
The average price is also not the annual growth rate expressed in pounds. One is a price level for October, while the other describes an annual percentage change. Keeping the measures separate avoids making the fall in the listed average stand in for either the annual or adjusted monthly result.
Gardner’s comparison with January 2024 concerns the rate of annual growth, not the average price itself. His statement that October was the weakest reading since then does not mean the £273,566 average was the lowest price recorded over that period, or that October brought the largest monthly fall.
October’s figures therefore show a market still recording a small annual increase, but at a slower pace than in September. The central contrast is between that easing annual rate and a monthly measure that was flat after adjustment, with the separately reported average price lower than a month earlier.
