The average price gap between homes in the South and the North of England has passed the \u00a3150,000 mark for the first time, according to the latest monthly report from Nationwide.<\/p>\n
The building society, which found that property values across the country increased by 0.5 per cent during September, said that the average price of a property in the North now stood at \u00a3150,851, while across the South the figure is \u00a3303,811.<\/p>\n
Across the South \u2013 an area that includes London, SE England, East Anglia and SW England \u2013 prices have increased by eight per cent over the year, compared to the average nationally of 3.8 per cent. The rate of price growth in the South has been outstripping that in the North for the past six years.<\/p>\n
Nationwide said that, in London, the annual rate of increase had returned to double figures, moving to an annual rate of 10.6 per cent over the latest quarter, from 7.3 per cent in the previous one.<\/p>\n
The average price approaching \u00a3450,000 in the capital is now three times the figure in the North while, in the London commuter belt, the average price has risen by 9.5 per cent over the year to \u00a3326,785.<\/p>\n
Across the country as a whole, the society said the average property price stood at \u00a3195,733.<\/p>\n
“In cash terms, the gap in average prices between the South and the North of England is at a record high, exceeding \u00a3150,000 for the first time, with average prices in the South now twice as high as those in the North,” the report said.<\/p>\n
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said that, across the board, there were signs that house price rises were approaching more usual levels, with the pace settling down since the middle of 2014 and falling more closely into line with wage growth.<\/p>\n
But he said it was a “mixed picture” across the regions, with growth accelerating in southern England, particularly London, but slowing down in the Midlands and most of the North.<\/p>\n
“The data in recent months provides some encouragement that the pace of house price increases may be stabilising close to the pace of earnings growth,” Mr Gardner said.<\/p>\n
“However, the risk remains that construction activity will lag behind strengthening demand, putting upward pressure on house prices and eventually reducing affordability.”<\/p>\n
Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said he expected house prices to rise by seven per cent across 2015.<\/p>\n
“We expect house prices to see solid increases over the coming months amid firm activity,” he said. “Given that house prices were soft in the latter months of 2014, this is likely to see annual house price inflation on the Nationwide’s measure move higher over the coming months.”<\/p>\n
He added that the shortage of homes coming on to the market, as reported recently by both surveyors and estate agents, posed the possibility of a further surge in prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The average price gap between homes in the South and the North of England has passed the \u00a3150,000 mark for the first time, according to the latest monthly report from Nationwide. The building society, which found that property values across the country increased by 0.5 per cent during September, said that the average price of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9PjAq-le","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poseidon-gp.com\/property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}