LONDON (AP) — House prices in Britain will fall ten percent next year as banks rein in mortgage lending and buyers are deterred by the economic slowdown, a leading property researcher forecast yesterday.

Hometrack acknowledged that because of the market turmoil it wasn't as sure about its prediction as in previous years, but the fact it has published one at all bucks a trend among British research groups who have abandoned house price estimates because of market volatility.

"It is harder to forecast," Richard Donnell, Hometrack's director of research, told the Associated Press. "This is a central forecast, but the range is getting wider." He could not specify how much wider the range was for 2009 than it had been in previous years.

Hometrack said its central forecast was for house prices to fall a further 10 percent in 2009 and three percent in 2010 — on top of falls of nine percent in 2008 — making the peak to trough fall in property prices roughly 22 percent. It did not give a monetary figure prediction.

The property research company expects repossessions will reach a near record high of 70,000 next year as homeowners struggle to make mortgage payments during a recession. That's up from 45,000 in 2008, and close to the highest level ever recorded by Hometrack — of 75,500 in 1991, when the country was last in a recession.

Unlike Hometrack, Nationwide, Halifax and the Council of Mortgage Lenders have all decided not to publish a house price forecast for 2009.

Halifax said it will not publish estimates because it is in the middle of being taken over by Lloyds TSB Goup PLC, and so does not think it is appropriate to publish independent figures which could be at odds with Lloyds' view of the market.

The other two researchers cited market volatility as the reason for cancelling their usual annual forecasts.

"Because things are moving so rapidly, we think it would add to the confusion by putting too much emphasis on a number that could change quickly," said Sue Knight, a spokeswoman for Nationwide.

Nationwide has published annual forecasts every year since 1988, except in 1992 and 1993 when the country's last house price slump was at its worst.

Nationwide said prices would be pushed down by a combination of banks' unwillingness to lend amid the financial crisis and the fact that buyers would be few and far between because of rising unemployment and a shrinking economy.

It did not make a forecast for house values but predicted that net mortgage lending would grow just £15 billion in 2009 — down from £39 billion in 2008 and £107 billion in 2007.

"It's an incredibly volatile environment," said Sarah Robson, spokeswoman for the Council of Mortgage Lenders, "and it's incredibly difficult to publish a forecast on house prices in this environment".