The price of an average home dropped 2.5 percent from April to 173,583 pounds ($344,000), Britain’s fourth-biggest mortgage lender said today in a statement. That’s the largest decline since the index started in January 1991. From a year earlier, prices fell 4.4 percent.

“Things are turning down in the UK – big time,” says Merryn Somerset Webb in Money Week.

“The housing market gets worse by the day; there are signs unemployment is about to take a turn for the worse as jobs in construction and retail start to go; oil prices have now started to ‘melt up’ – even more quickly than I suggested they would – and rising inflation means no interest rate cuts.”