Regional Averages - England & Wales Summary
Areas outperforming the 'average' are London, South East and West and the East of England.
Some areas are still falling further than previous lows of 2009 including the North East and West, Yorkshire and Humber, West Midlands and Wales.
The East Midlands is just holding off hitting the lows of 2009 again, but by less than £500!
Acadametrics/LSL Scottish index suggests prices are doing better this year than before. Gordon Fowlis,
Regional Managing Director of Your Move, an estate agency chain that is part of LSL, comments:
"Although the Scottish housing market has had to battle with a lack of cheap mortgages and poor funding conditions over the last year, it looks as if the market is now sailing into calmer waters". The better performance is believed to be"thanks to the help of the Funding for Lending Scheme. The positive increases in house prices for three consecutive months of 2013 are encouraging."
Northern Ireland still continues to be hampered by falls from Quarter One's results. For those who couldn't get on the housing ladder during the boom, they must be thanking their lucky starts. Price falls are now nearly 50% and that's on top of a 17% rise in inflation, so in real terms that a tremendous fall since 2007.
For anyone buying, selling or investing in a home, the national figures from property price indices are useful to find out what's happening sentiment wise, but shouldn't be used for property decision making. To know if now is a good time to buy, sell or invest in a property, knowing what's happening at a local level is essential.
City Centre property price performance varies by 30%
Even at city and town levels, your property price or the value of the property you want to buy or sell can be going up when the regional data says, on average, prices are going down. So as well as tracking the regional data, we also track the latest property prices movements for major towns and cities in the UK in April.
Areas where property prices are still falling - areas still struggling to reach the 'bottom of the market' include Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham, Leeds and Sheffield.
Cities where property prices appear to be 'at the bottom' for the moment, include Manchester, Peterborough and Birmingham. Areas appearing to recover to 2007 heights include Cardiff, Bristol and Bournemouth, each 10% down.
Brighton and Hove and London are showing consistent signs of good solid growth, although all property prices have failed to keep up with inflation, which in real terms means there is still no area which has recovered fully from the credit crunch. For those that are claiming there is a housing bubble on the horizon, this is clearly a very 'London and South centric' view of the property market.
Highest Property Price and Largest Falls - according to the latest Land Registry figures, average house prices in Middlesbrough have seen the greatest annual fall of nearly 12% year on year with Oldham down by 11%, with Blackburn and Blackpool not far behind, falling on average by 8%. Areas which are doing well so far this year include Wokingham and Walsall up 3%.
Greater London is up by 6.2% with Camden raising the roof on prices up 12% year on year, and Merton, Hackney, Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham up 10-11%. Not all of London is on the up though, with Greenwich, Enfield and Havering up by less than 2%, so in real terms a fall when you take into account current inflation levels.
Edinburgh shows good signs of solid growth, up 10.7% on the high of 2007, Glasgow
on the other hand has recovered to the 2009 low, but still has a way to go to reach the 2007 high.
Belfast prices still don't appear to have reached rock bottom, despite falling nearly 50%.
So is now a good time to buy, sell, invest, build or are you better off renting? and Supply and Demand
