The latest house price index from Hometrack provides further evidence of the vast regional differences across the UK’s housing market.
In the year to July, house prices in the UK’s cities climbed by an average of 4.2% to £252,400 according to the most recent Hometrack Cities House Price Index, while over the past three months prices have risen by an average 2.9%.
The annual rate is only slightly down on last month’s 4.6% rise from June 2017 to June 2018, but one thing remains consistent – the varying performances of the UK’s 20 major cities analysed in the index, with parts of the north and Midlands outperforming the south.
The strongest performance
The country’s fastest growing cities are now Nottingham and Leicester in the East Midlands, which saw annual house price rises of 7.5% and 6.6% respectively, while Nottingham’s three-monthly property price rise was also the strongest in the country at 3.9%.
Liverpool, with house price inflation of 6.3%, Manchester with 6.1% and Birmingham and Leeds each with 5.7% were the next best performing cities in the UK over the past 12 months, all well above the UK average and showing a trend for the strengthening of property prices in the north of the country.
The only city in England to register a fall on an annual basis was London, which recorded a 0.1% decline since July 2017, although prices there did see a small 1.2% uptick over the past three months after several months of poor performance. In Scotland, property prices in Aberdeen have fallen by 4% in the year to July 2018.
Room for improvement
Hometrack’s research also looked at house price recovery since the 2008 financial crisis, and it discovered that three major cities were still below where they were 10 years ago, while other parts of the country had seen much speedier recovery.
While Belfast was the worst hit, with average prices now at -28% of what they were pre-2008, Aberdeen has also been slow to recover with average property prices still 3% below where they were, while in Liverpool they’re still -1% lower than in 2008. However, the housing market in Liverpool in particular is on an upward trajectory, indicating that prices are likely to continue to rise sharply as has been seen in recent months in the city and across the north-west.
