Back to 2007: UK house prices rise for every region and buyer type
It’s a full house for the UK home buying market, with property prices rising last month in every region of the UK, London included, and for buyer types ranging from first-timers to those at the wealthiest rungs of the property ladder.
In London, the average property price hit £650,683, up another 1.9 per cent on August and 2.6 per cent on September last year, according to the Rightmove House Price.
Across the UK, home sellers were asking for £344,445 on average, £5,983 more than in September.
The average UK house price is was up 6.5 per cent on October last year, despite the end of the stamp duty holiday.
Property platform Rightmove put the resilience of the market down to a rush to do a deal and lock in lower fixed mortgage rates before a Bank of England rate rise as well as fast turnover of property for sale.
Rightmove’s director of property data Tim Bannister said of the across-the-board price rises, or full house effect was an “extremely rare event”..
“The stock shortages started after the first lockdown, and they look set to continue with the underlying housing market fundamentals remaining strong, and an additional incentive to buy and fix your mortgage interest rate before a widely expected rate rise,” he added.
Bannister said although more properties were coming to the market, there was still not enough to match demand.
The average time to secure a buyer across the UK was just 37 days in September, down almost a month from January.
And the number of sales agreed across the UK in September – the most recent full month of data – jumped 15.2 per cent compared with the same month in 2019.
Director of estate agents Benham and Reeves, Marc von Grundherr said London had so far been fairly “muted” but a return to the workplace and foreign buyers coming back in had provided the capital with a recent boost.
“Don’t be surprised to see London regain the property price growth top spot before the year is out,” he said
“While initial asking price expectations are perhaps a little over-optimistic, to say the least, a lack of stock to satisfy demand means that homes are selling fast and for a very good price,” von Grundherr added.
House hunters in the capital looking for some reprieve from the surging house prices in the capital may find solace in the small number of boroughs posting declining askign prices.
Islington, Camden, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Southwark and Hackney all posted month-on-month dips as well as year-on-year declines in property prices, according to three-month average data from Rightmove.
The average house will still set London buyers back between £566,000 in Ealing and £952,000 in Camden on average for a city abode.