What’s Happening With House Prices?

Every month, Halifax releases their house price index report which contains a plethora of information on regional and national house prices. Yesterday’s index reported an annual increase of 7.4% bringing the average price to £267,587 nationally.

Russell Galley the Managing Director of Halifax said “The ‘race-for-space’ as people changed their preferences and lifestyle choices undoubtedly had a major impact. Looking at price changes over the past year, prices for flats are up just 6.1%, compared to 8.9% for semi-detached properties and 8.8% for detached. This translates into cash increases for detached properties of nearly £41,000 compared to just £6,640 for flats.”

The report also looks at regional differences, ‘The South West remains the strongest performing region in England, with annual house price growth of 9.7% (average house price of £276,226). The weakest performing regions in terms of annual house price inflation are all to be found in the South and East of England, though it should be highlighted that these are also the areas with the highest average house prices.

Eastern England has seen annual growth of 7.2% (average house price of £310,664) while in the South East it’s 7% (average house price of £360,795).

Greater London remains the outlier, with annual growth of just 1% (average house price of £510,515), and was again the only region or nation to record a fall in house prices over the latest rolling three-monthly period (-0.1%).’