British housing prices fell in August, for the first time in 20 months, according to research published yesterday.

Nationwide Building Society's monthly housing price index shows that prices fell by 0.5 per cent in August, although they are still 9.2 per cent higher than a year ago.

Nationwide said that these figures indicated that the housing market had already peaked and was heading into a downturn, despite figures published yesterday showing that mortgage lending from banks stood at a record level.