London house prices rose at the slowest pace in a year in December and fell in the top end of the sector, property consultants Hometrack said in a report.
Hometrack said today that house prices rose just 0.1 per cent this month from November - the seventh successive slowdown in house price inflation since May's peak of 2.6 per cent. The figures are not seasonally adjusted.
At the top end of the market, house prices in London and the southeast have started falling due mainly to fear of unemployment spurred by the recent spate of job losses in the City, the report said.
The average monthly property price fall in London was 0.1 per cent in December.
However, Hometrack said property prices in much of the rest of Britain were still booming, drawing support from the lowest interest rates in almost 40 years and low unemployment levels. Prices in Devon, southwest England, for example, rose 0.6 per cent.
Property prices in Britain have been booming for several years and Halifax, the country's largest home loan lender, reported recently that prices rose 1.4 per cent in November to stand 29 per cent higher than a year earlier.
House prices are a key determinant of consumer demand in Britain where over two-thirds of families own their own homes.