In encouraging news, UK property prices saw a 0.2% increase in November, raising the annual price increase to 1.5%, leaving the average house now costing £231,000, slightly off their recent peak value of £234,000, which was recorded in July and August.
These figures, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in December, fly in the face of recent surveys from Nationwide and Halifax, who are amongst the UK’s largest lenders, who both reported slight price falls over the last year.
Not surprisingly, the ONS report also confirmed that the largest and fastest increases were recorded in London, but this did not skew the data, as if both London and the South East prices were taken out of the equation, the national price was still higher than a year ago.
Confirming these findings, the ONS said: “House prices continue to remain relatively stable across most of the UK, although prices in London are increasing and prices in Northern Ireland are falling.
“The year-on-year increase reflected growth of 1.8% in England and 2.8% in Wales, which were offset by a decline of 2.2% in Scotland and 11.7% in Northern Ireland.”
Whilst this is welcome news, especially for home-owners, the modest annual increase shown does not represent a general revival in house prices and the market remains subdued in activity.
As reported in another article here (Funding for Lending), the Government’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) is starting to gain momentum and, hopefully, will start to prime the first-time buyer market, which in turn may increase market activity in the housing pipeline in the medium to long-term across the country.
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