London is now one of the five cities with the lowest house price growth in the UK

London is now one of the five cities with the lowest house price growth in the UK, and has been overtaken by a slew of regional cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Leicester.

In March, house price growth in London was just 4.9 per cent, according to Hometrack. Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, the top cities for house price growth, boasted inflation of 8.8 per cent, eight per cent and 7.3 per cent respectively.

Read more: UK house price growth fell to its lowest since 2015 last month

House price growth in both Cambridge (1.7 per cent) and Oxford (3.7 per cent) also fell below the five per cent mark for the first time in five years. Hometrack said affordability pressures and tax changes were driving a fall in demand, and that in London further price falls will be necessary for the stock coming onto the market to sell.

In central London, house prices have been falling on high-end homes for some time, due to increases on stamp duty on properties worth over £1m.

There has been some disagreement over whether the price falls will continue, with some analysts saying the necessary price corrections have already occurred, and others arguing that not all vendors have dropped prices as far as they need to to shift their stock.

Richard Donnell, insight director at Hometrack, said: “Buyers outside the south of England appear to be shrugging off concerns over Brexit and a squeeze on real incomes to take advantage of low mortgage rates.

“This is shifting the dynamics of the housing market. Cities that have been driving house price growth over the last two to three years, such as London and Cambridge, are now seeing a slowdown while large regional cities continue to register robust and sustained levels of house price growth.”