Nationwide Building Society trimmed its forecast for UK house-price growth today as it posted full-year profit up 21%. Britain's biggest customer-owned lender predicted house prices would increase by 0-2% this year, having previously forecast a rise of 2%.
But Nationwide said the once-booming UK housing market was not heading for a crash. 'Our view has been that there would be a soft landing (for the housing market) and we still do believe it's going to be a soft landing,' it said.
Rival mortgage lender HBOS said earlier this month that UK property prices stagnated in April as a series of interest rate rises cooled the market.
Nationwide's pretax profit for the year ended April 4 rose to £517.1m sterling from £426.8m. The lender's main business of mortgage lending slowed with net advances falling to £10.9 billion from £13.2 billion and market share down to 11.8% from 12.8%.
Profit was boosted by increased unsecured lending and deposits, as well as profit feeding through from mortgages sold in earlier years.
Nationwide also increased its efficiency with costs as a percentage of income falling. Gross unsecured lending rose 23% to £1.1 billion. It said it added 450,000 current accounts and 217,000 credit card accounts last year.
