UK house prices: Total value of UK residential property hits £5.8tn
The combined cost of all the homes in the UK has increased by almost a trillion in the last five years, according to data from the estate agent Savills.
Adding the values of all the homes in Britain makes a heady total of £5.75 trillion, or 2.7 times the UK’s GDP. The region with by far the most value was, unsurprisingly, London.
The biggest increases were in London, where prices have jumped by 61 per cent in the last five years and 20 per cent in the last year. Only in the north west, north east and Northern Ireland are prices lower today than they were five years ago.
Apart from the regional trends, there were some interesting changes in the type of tenure, too. According to the report, the number of homes owned without a mortgage rose 437,471 in the past five years, to over 8.3 million, with values rising £325 billion to almost £2 trillion.
As a result of the credit crunch, however, the number of homes owned with a mortgage fell by around 800,000 over five years. Reflecting this drop, the value of private rented stock has soared by 59 per cent in the last five years and 17 per cent in the last 12 months. It now stands at over £1tn.