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Summary of property price and market indices
City/town property price tracking
Demand, supply and transactions
This report is to help give everyone – industry and consumers – a quick five-minute guide to what’s happening in the property market, according to the property indices, along with property expert Kate Faulkner’s comments.
Rightmove
Cautious recovery continues but larger-home sales lag behind
“The average price of property coming to market rises by 0.8% (+£2,906) this month, mainly due to a 1.2% jump in the largest homes sector (top-of-the-ladder). Annual asking price growth eases to +3.0%, with new seller asking prices now £5,800 below October’s peak as market cautiously moves towards pre-pandemic activity levels despite economic turbulence.”
Home.co.uk
Lower pricing triggers uptick in demand
“Asking prices across England and Wales slipped a further 0.6% during February, making the year-on-year growth negative (-0.5%) for the first time since Dec 2019.”
RICS
Prices and sales still under pressure for now but picture a little less negative looking further out
“House prices continue to slip at the national level.”
Nationwide
House prices record seventh consecutive monthly decline in March
“March saw a further decline in annual house price growth, with prices down 3.1% compared with the same month last year. March also saw a further monthly price fall (-0.8%) - the seventh in a row – which leaves prices 4.6% below their August peak (after taking account of seasonal effects).”
Halifax
UK housing market shows resilience as prices edge higher in March
“On an annual basis, house prices were +1.6% higher than a year ago, slowing from +2.1% in February. This is the weakest rate of annual growth in nearly three-and-a-half years (October 2019), having fallen markedly since June 2022’s peak of +12.5%.”
Zoopla
The housing market continues to experience a soft repricing?
“Annual inflation slows to 4.1%, prices 1% lower than in October 2022.”
Definitely some cheery news from most of the property statisticians this month! The only main index which is reporting some gloomy figures is the Nationwide, which has reported its seventh month fall in a row and its biggest by 3.1% year on year. Home.co.uk is also reporting slight falls year on year, but Rightmove and Zoopla are both showing prices in positive territory year on year, albeit under 5% growth. Although Halifax is reporting growth, we’ve found their month on month/year on year property stats to be quite erratic as opposed to setting any trends.
The best news is really on a transactional basis. Many reports are suggesting that property sales are picking up quite well – even if mortgage applications are down. According to Home.co.uk “Fears of a flood of panic sales prove to be unfounded as supply remains restrained. In fact, the monthly rate of new instructions is slightly down on February 2022” and their thoughts are “Given a further month of improving marketing times (and no nasty shocks from the Bank of England or UK Treasury), asking prices will likely form a firm base from which growth can occur.”
Zoopla’s latest report suggests we are on track for 500,000 sales in the first half of this year “Market conditions at the end of Q1 are better than many had expected - buyers and sellers are striking deals at an increasing rate.”
And, the next bit of good news is that despite the fear for first time buyers’ affordability due to higher mortgage rates, they are the ones that, according to most reports, driving the market. Rightmove says “Typical first-time buyer type properties (two-bedrooms and fewer) lead the recovery as we enter the Spring market: Average newly marketed prices for this type of home are now just £500 lower than their record last year. Sales agreed in this sector are unexpectedly recovering fastest, and in the last two weeks are just 4% behind the same period in the more normal market of 2019”.
Surprisingly, the ones with equity that we thought would drive the market this year are holding back: “larger home sales are lagging behind as sales agreed in the last two weeks in the top-of-the-ladder sector are 10% behind the same period in 2019, and 13% behind in the second-stepper sector.”
However, Zoopla point out that a lot of this might be down to buyer motivation. First time buyers are likely to be renting and with rents going up a lot over the last 18 months and the chronic shortage of rental properties in many areas, first time buyers have a huge incentive to get on the ladder as well as more stock to choose from than seen during the pandemic years.
Nationwide is perhaps the ‘outsider’ in this month’s report, which is rare, but from a mortgage perspective, they believe “It will be hard for the market to regain much momentum in the near term since consumer confidence remains weak and household budgets remain under pressure from high inflation. Housing affordability also remains stretched, where mortgage rates remain well above the lows prevailing at this point last year.”
Overall though, the market is, so far holding up better than we thought.
Personally, I don’t think we are out of the woods just yet. We may just be getting a Spring bounce and this could run out by May leaving us with a quiet summer and rest of the year. Buyers and sellers have defied all forecasts since Brexit now – especially the doom and gloom ones – so hopefully this year won’t be the exception!
Download Kate Faulkner's latest property price and market report here
Halifax
“Northern Ireland continues to report the strongest annual growth in house prices of +4.9% (average house price of £186,459). In Wales the rate of annual property price inflation has slowed to +1.0% (average house price of £213,959). Similarly in Scotland, the annual rate of growth fell to +2.3% (average property price of £199,853).”
Nationwide
“Northern Ireland saw a noticeable slowing in annual house price growth, although prices were still up 1.3% year-on-year. Meanwhile in Wales, annual house price growth slowed from 4.5% to -0.7%.”
Nationwide
“Scotland remained the weakest performing region with prices down 3.1% compared with a year ago, a sharp slowing from the 3.3% year-on-year increase the previous quarter.”
e.surv
“The average house price in Scotland in January 2023 has increased by some £9,700 - or 4.6% - over the last twelve months. This annual rate of growth has decreased by -2.0% from December’s revised 6.6%, which is the largest reduction in the annual growth rate of the last fourteen months.
“However, in January 2023, 26 of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland were still seeing their average prices rise above the levels of twelve months earlier, only three fewer than in December. The six areas where values fell over the year were, in descending order, Na h-Eileanan Siar (-5.8%), Aberdeen City (-4.5%), Stirling (-3.8%), Scottish Borders (-2.8%); Dundee City (-0.8%) and Fife (-0.5%).
“The area with the highest annual increase in average house prices in January 2023 was Clackmannanshire, up by 25.0%. However, there were only 33 transactions in Clackmannanshire in January 2023, which falls below the desired sample size to obtain a reasonably accurate average price. Consequently, we suggest that the result for Clackmannanshire is treated with a degree of caution this month. The same ruling also applies to the three Island groups of Na h-Eileanan Siar, the Shetland Islands and the Orkney Islands, where there were only 6, 14 and 16 sales in the month respectively. On a weight-adjusted basis - which incorporates both the change in prices and the number of transactions involved - there were six local authority areas in January which accounted for 51% of the £9,700 increase in Scotland’s average house price over the year. The six areas in descending order of influence are: – Edinburgh (23%); North Lanarkshire (7%); Glasgow (6%); Aberdeenshire (5%); East Renfrewshire (5%); and South Lanarkshire (5%).”
Download Kate Faulkner's latest property price and market report here
Regional price performance shows that the Land Registry data is really lagging way behind what’s actually happening in the current market. With the North East measuring at +10% YoY for Land Registry, Nationwide’s negative measure of 0.5% for the first Quarter of 2023 shows just how much buyers and sellers need to listen to local market experts who are operating in today’s market – not historic price changes.
And, Zoopla have a great chart which shows that versus the 2019 market, which most believe the 2023 market will mimic, is actually showing homes are selling faster. And some additional great news is that in London, they can see a revival in demand for flats. This is partly due to the fact that houses outside of the Capital increased during the pandemic, while flats stagnated or even fell in London. As a result, buyers are finding purchasing a flat in London versus moving to a house outside of the Capital better value for money than it’s been before, and staying in London means less commuting is required.
Nationwide
“Our regional house price indices are produced quarterly with data for Q1 (the three months to March) showing a further slowdown in annual house price growth in all regions. Indeed, nine out of our 13 regions recorded annual house price declines in Q1.
“East Anglia, which was the strongest performing region last quarter, saw a significant slowdown, with prices falling 1.8% year-on-year, making it the weakest performing English region. The neighbouring Outer South East saw a 1.5% year-on-year decline, while London saw a 1.4% fall. The West Midlands was the strongest performing region, with prices up 1.4% compared with a year ago. Across northern England overall (which comprises North, North West, Yorkshire & The Humber, East Midlands and West Midlands), prices were flat compared with Q1 2022. Meanwhile southern England (South West, Outer South East, Outer Metropolitan, London and East Anglia) saw a 1.1% decline.”
Halifax
“The average house price edged up in all the UK nations and regions during March. However, with the exceptions of Greater London and the North East, all areas of the country experienced a slowdown in the rate of annual house price inflation. Annual house price growth in the West Midlands was +3.8% with average house prices in London up very slightly on this time last year (+0.1%) with the typical property now costing £537,250.”
Download Kate Faulkner's latest property price and market report here
For city/town tracking, we use Land Registry (government data) and Zoopla/Hometrack. The Land Registry data is useful because we can analyse how property prices have changed over time and this helps us to put today’s price information into context.
The Zoopla/Hometrack data is useful as they take into account the change in mix of property transactions during the pandemic to houses away from flats. This has meant the likes of the Land Registry and other indices have over exaggerated price increases year on year.
Overall, out of 30 cities, since 2005, property prices have risen above inflation in all bar three – Belfast, Aberdeen and Newcastle upon Tyne. Even with the price growth seen during the pandemic, what this shows is that, in real terms, especially for those that own outright the property they have isn’t necessarily delivering from an investment perspective.
Topping the price growth charts according to Land Registry and Hometrack:-
Lowest performers are:
The only real top/lowest performers we can consider this month are really the ones from Hometrack. They are showing that despite some of the doom and gloom, areas which are still affordable are doing well such as Nottingham and Peterborough. However, those which have reached their ‘affordability’ limits, including Oxford, London and Reading, are struggling to see property prices rise year on year, especially with higher mortgage rates.
However, the other lower performers – Aberdeen and Glasgow – do still have some reasonable affordability levels, but are still suffering, which shows how individual price changes can be to an area.
Zoopla
“The annual rate of growth has slowed sharply across major cities, where house price inflation was running in double digits a year ago to less than 6% now. The weakest annual growth is in London where higher mortgage rates hit demand harder in higher-value markets.”
Download Kate Faulkner's latest property price and market report here
We are getting some of the best data from the Chris and TwentyEA this year with new instructions so far this year being above 2017 and indeed on a par with 2022.