The Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee did not even discuss the possibility of raising interest rates in its November meeting, a firm signal that rates will be staying put at 4.75% for a while longer, and may have peaked.

All the indicators were near or on target, members of the committee agreed, and the world economic growth looked likely to remain robust and broadly based. House price inflation had been declining rapidly, the committee noted, and the labour market, although tight, had not tightened further. But the fall in sterling exchange rates and market interest rates and the rise in equity prices since August would tend to support activity and raise inflation. Broad money and unsecured lending growth remained high and inflationary pressures seemed to be building in the supply chain.

Members of the committee were so much in agreement that the governor simply asked for a vote that the rates stayed fixed at 4.75%, which was agreed unanimously.

Key to the decision had been the cooling housing reports and governor Mervyn King told a newspaper on Wednesday that fears of an overheating housing market had abated. "Concern that there was six months ago has diminished," he said in an interview with The Yorkshire Post. "There has been a cooling of the market."

The committee noted that in October, for the first month in three years, both the Halifax and Nationwide house price indices had fallen. House price inflation appeared to have been slowing in all regions of the country in the third quarter.

Most indicators of housing market activity and prices at different stages of the house buying process confirmed the picture of a slowing market. For example, the number of mortgage approvals in September had been at the lowest level since August 2000 and a Hometrack measure of market tightness comparing the selling and asking prices of houses had been falling steadily since April.

As usual, the committee had also seen a preview of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) survey for October, which had pointed to a continued balance of respondents reporting house price falls and a further decline in the ratio of average property sales to the average stock of unsold properties per surveyor.

The committee thought house prices appeared to be correcting towards a more sustainable level relative to earnings. But it was uncertain what that level was or how quickly any adjustment would occur. The impact of house price movements on consumption was also a key uncertainty. The committee did not expect a less buoyant housing market to imply a substantial weakening of household spending.