U.K. house prices fell at the slowest pace in 10 months during March, suggesting the housing slump may be reaching a bottom, Hometrack Ltd. said.

The average cost of a home in England and Wales declined 0.6 percent from February to 156,100 pounds ($224,000), the London-based property researcher said in a report today. Prices dropped 10.3 percent from a year earlier.

Rising unemployment and the deepest economic contraction since 1980 are sapping demand for housing after prices tripled in the decade ending in 2007. Analysts at UBS AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said this month the property market may now be showing some “green shoots” of recovery as government aid to bolster mortgage lending take effect.

“While market conditions remain extremely tough, and the economic outlook is far from rosy, agents are currently marking down prices less aggressively than they were in the autumn,” said Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack. “This modest pickup we see as being largely seasonal but supported by pent-up demand feeding back into the market.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=azRVVXkSKxDw&refer=economy
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