| UK
House Prices Situation at 20 4 2007: Prices
remain strong, especially in London/south-east.
UK
House Prices Forecast: Continued
growth in most competitive areas, stable prices elsewhere.
House
Price Inflation
March
has seen a raft of banks, building societies and other
organisations that publish house prices
all update their HPI (House Price Inflation) indexes.
They all show a determined upwards trend, but don't
all agree – as we've seen before, each index uses
a slightly different set of data to calculate HPI, and
the resulting differences can be quite large.
1.
Property website Rightmove leads the way with a 1.5
per cent month-on-month increase in house prices
for March, pushing the year-on-year average to 12.2
per cent.
2.
Just slightly behind is Halifax, with their HPI index
showing a 1 per cent monthly increase for March, taking
the yearly average to 11.1 per cent. Halifax group economist
Tim Crawford commented that there are "emerging
signs" that financial pressures on householders
are "dampening housing demand".
3.
Nationwide's March HPI figures show a 0.4 per cent month-on-month
interest, which leaves their year-on-year rate of increase
to 9.3 per cent.
4.
The Land Registry index is always interesting, as unlike
other indices it is based on the actual sale prices
of every property sold in the England and Wales, and
includes properties sold in cash sales. The most recent
Land Registry figures are for February, and show a year-on-year
increase of 8.5 per cent – just behind Nationwide's
figure.
5.
The most conservative HPI comes from property valuation
site Hometrack. Their index shows a 0.8 per cent month-on-month
increase for March, providing an annual rate of increase
of 6.7 per cent.
Despite
the wide variation in these figures, they all show continued
growth in UK average house prices.
Most analysis shows that this growth is primarily being
driven by rising prices in London, the south-east and
Northern Ireland, but the market as
a whole remains healthy.
RICS:
Upturn In Price Growth?
March
saw a small upturn in the number of chartered surveyors
reporting increased prices, according to the surveyors'
trade body, RICS. According to their latest figures,
25.5 per cent more surveyors reported and increase in
prices in March than a fall.
This
represents a small increase from February, when the
figure was only 24.8 per cent. Perhaps more significantly,
it is the first time for five months that this figure
has risen, albeit only slightly.
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