There's a major sign that house prices in London are about to start falling.

A drop in London property prices is "inevitable," according to a London estate agent.

Portico Estate Agents says that transaction volumes, or the number of homes being bought and sold in the capital, are "critically low" — almost 50% lower than this time last year. That could be a bad sign.

Part of that drop is explained by a big bounce in sales in the run-up to April this year, when a change to property taxes introduced by ex-chancellor George Osborne came into effect, followed by an immediate fall. Transactions in Westminster, for example, dropped to a record low of 84 in the month of April following the change. There and elsewhere, they've remained low ever since.

Portico says: "Transaction volume levels ... are down 60% in prime central London against last year. With price historically following volume decline, we have now seen the first monthly year on year price decrease of 1.1% in the City of Westminster (September 2015 to September 2016) since the 2008 recession."

There's a very recent example of price decline following volume decline: the financial crash of 2008. Take a look at this chart:


By Thomas Colson.
Full story at Yahoo News.