June 2017 Property Surveying factfile

Note:  all figures below are the most recently available data.

UK House Price Index – April 2017 (released 13th June)
Data source: Land Registry

UK Average = £220,094, up 5.6% over the year, a 1.6% increase over the month

Monthly index (where January 2015 = 100) is 115.4

In its statement, Land Registry reported that price expectations are moderately positive, although enquiries from new buyers remains subdued. There was a 20.3 per cent% increase in seasonally adjusted property transactions in the UK, of property valued at £40k or more, compared to April 2016.  The higher tax rates on additional properties was introduced in April 2016 which accounts for the unusually low number of transactions, as lots of property transactions were pushed through in March 2016.

House prices in the East of England showed the largest growth, at 8.1 per cent and the lowest growth was in the North East, at 0.6 per cent in the twelve months to April 2017. London prices grew 4.7 per cent, 1.5 per cent higher than the year to March 2017 and the first time in eleven months that London price growth rate has increased.

Halifax – May 2017
UK Average = £220,706, up 0.4% in the month, down -0.2% in the quarter, up 3.3% in the year.

Over the coming months, house price levels are likely to remain supported by the continuing low supply of new homes, low mortgage rates and high employment. For the fourteenth consecutive month, the number of properties coming onto the market fell, leaving estate agents’ stock at an almost historically low level.

There has been a 12 per cent rise in private enterprise new build housing completions in the first quarter (Jan-Mar 2017) compared to the previous quarter. Housing association completions dropped by 5%.

Monthly index (where 1983 = 100) is 714.3

Rightmove – May 2017
England and Wales average £317,281 up 1.2% in the month

Typical family homes are the strongest sector for price growth. Homeowners with children under eleven are twice as likely to move house and represent 11 per cent of sellers. The typical three/four bedroom home (excluding detached) they seek is the highest priced sector, increasing by 5.4 per cent to £270,953 over the last twelve months.

Nationwide – May 2017
UK average = £208,711 down -0.2% in the month, up 2.1% in the year.

House prices declined for the third consecutive month. Annual house price growth dip to 2.1% provides further evidence that the housing market is losing momentum.

LSL / Acadata – May 2017 (published 12th June)
Average England and Wales = £303,200, up 0.3% from last month, up 4.8% in the year (4.9% if London and the SE of England are excluded).

The average home has now increased in value by £13,934 (4.8 per cent) in the last twelve months.

Despite a slow start to the year and the uncertainty of the General Election, prices have climbed to a new peak. Activity has continued to increase, although more slowly than usual but still 6 per cent on April.

The West Midlands remains the region with the highest price growth.  Liverpool declared the ‘city to watch’.

London transactions have remained slow although prime property has grown strongly with City of London at 9.6 per cent, Kensington and Chelsea up 8.8 per cent, and the City of Westminster and 9.7 per cent.

London sales in three months to end of April were 29 per cent lower than same period last year, and showed the second lowest annual rise since March 2012. Average price in London was £615,838, up 0.1% on March 2017.

HM Revenue & Customs (May 2017, published 21st June)
The provisional number of UK residential property transaction completions (>£40k) for May 2017 was 100,170, representing a decrease of 3.3 per cent between Apr-May 2017.

Comparisons to May 2016 are not made, due to the higher tax rates on additional properties that were introduced in April 2016.

Other factors may also have contributed, including the Bank of England’s plan to curb Buy to Let mortgage which resulted in rushed purchases, and the EU “Brexit” Referendum that subsequently affected transactions.

The number of non-adjusted residential transactions for May was circa 7.9 per cent higher than April 2017.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said the housing market is ‘moving sideways’, reporting that there was a sizeable fall in the demand for loans during April. £18.4bn was advanced in mortgages, representing an 11 per cent drop on March. Allowing for the volatile seasonal factors of the spring months, the amount borrowed in April 2017 was higher than the annual average, and 4 per cent higher than in April 2016.

The number of home movers and landlords taking out mortgages is falling, while the number of first time buyers is rising. The number of first time buyer mortgages overtook the number home movers, for the first time since 1996. The market appears to be buoyed up by first time buyers and remortgage customers.

Low home mover activity results in fewer properties for sale and this will continue to underpin house price values, even as the rate of price rises slows.

Land Registry Price Paid Data April 2017 (next published 28th June)
Of the 75,412 sales lodged for registration in April, the most expensive residential property sale was a flat in Knightsbridge, which sold for £90m. There were 429 residential property sales valued at £1m or more in England and Wales, 247 of which were in London.

The cheapest residential sales were three terraced properties in Ferryhill and Bishop Auckland, both in County Durham, which each sold for £10k.

REGIONAL HOUSE PRICES

UK HPI Regional figures (all percentages are positive unless indicated otherwise)
April 17 Average price (£)

GBP

Monthly change

%

Annual change

%

England £236,519 1.3% 5.7%
Northern Ireland
(Quarter 1 – 2017)
£124,007 -0.8% 4.3%
Scotland £145,735 5.4% 6.8%
Wales £147,921 0.9% 4.2%
East Midlands £178,844 1.6% 6.5%
East of England £280,690 0.6% 8.1%
London £482,779 0.7% 4.7%
North East £123,234 1.0% 0.6%
North West £152,765 2.1% 4.1%
South East £315,334 0.3% 5.9%
South West £243,215 0.7% 6.8%
West Midlands Region £183,250 1.3% 6.0%
Yorkshire & The Humber £155,357 3.9% 4.9%

UK HPI Average monthly price by property type

Property type April 2017 April 2016 Difference
Detached £332,839 £311,664 6.8%
Semi-detached £206,873 £195,838 5.6%
Terraced £177,379 £170,071 4.3%
Flat or maisonette £199,075 £187,786 6.0%
All £220,094 £208,443 5.6%

 

Rightmove regional figures
May 2017 Average price (£)

GBP

Monthly change

%

Annual change

%

Greater London 649,864 2.1 0.9
South East 426,767 2.0 3.4
South West 309,033 1.5 3.7
East of England 349,251 0.0 4.4
West Midlands 218,620 1.3 5.9
East Midlands 205,453 0.2 4.4
Wales 182,769 -1.8 0.7
North West 185,911 -0.1 3.6
Yorkshire & Humberside 180,672 0.1 1.9
North East 150,935 0.4 1.6

 

FOCUS ON LONDON Average Price (£)

GBP

Monthly change

%

Annual change

%

Best and Worst (-) performers according to:
Rightmove May 2017
Barnet 737,881 1.3 10.0
Barking and Dagenham 314,233 3.4 5.8
Merton 647,849 -4.7 -9.2
Hounslow 541,252 3.8 -7.5
LSL Acadata April  17
Haringey 645,872 -0.2 12.5
City of Westminster 1,075,627 1.1 9.7
Hammersmith & Fulham 850,121 -2.4 -8.1
Islington 711,374 -2.0 -10.4

Figures exclude the City of London, due to small number of transactions

RICS Survey Overview
The RICS Residential Market Survey for May 2017 (published on the day of the General Election – 8th June 2017) reported that new buyers and instructions from those waiting to sell, together with agreed house sales, were disappointing and continued to decline in May. Price growth also lost momentum and is expected to continue to decline over the next three months.

New instructions of second-hand properties to agents had dropped for the fifteenth successive month.

The number of new properties coming onto the market has continued to decline over the past two years. The General Election is largely responsible for this month’s drop, as a ‘wait and see’ approach is adopted. The level of new listings has been the most negative since July 2016. New buyer enquiry figure has stagnated over the last six months, with the headline price growth indicator falling from 22 per cent to 17 per cent in May and central London prices slipping. London expectation remains less optimistic than other areas, although the expectations of all regions has declined.

In the medium term, house prices are still expected to increase faster than wages. Long term expectations remain confident and over the next five years it is envisaged that house price inflation will average +3.5 per cent per annum across the whole of the UK.

Tenant demand remained largely flat, with agents predicting rent rises nationally over the next three months, and a possible 2 per cent increase in rental growth for the next year.

Source: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

 

Rightmove.co.uk is the UK’s leading property website, displaying details of homes for sale or rent to the largest online audience. It is consistently ranked the number one property website in the UK (source: Experian Hitwise). It has around 90% of all properties for sale and at any time displays a stock of over one million properties to buy or rent, worth around £270 billion. The Rightmove.co.uk site attracts over 110 million visits from home movers each month who view in excess of 1.5 billion pages (Rightmove data, 2015).

LSL Acad E&W HPI is derived from Land Registry (LR) house price data, seasonally and mix adjusted by property type. © Crown copyright material reproduced with the permission of Land Registry. The prices are smoothed to show underlying trends. LSL Acad E&W HPI includes cash purchase prices and is the only index based upon the complete, factual house price data for England & Wales, as opposed to a sample.

UK HPI: Monthly house price inflation, calculated using data from Land Registry, Registers of Scotland and Land and Property Services Northern Ireland. This replaces the previous House Price Indices separately published by Office of National Statistics and Land Registry.

All figures within this article are correct at the time of going to press, and are reproduced in good faith. No responsibility will be taken for any decisions taken based on the information contained herein. Always seek professional advice.

Next Monthly Market Fact File due in July 2017.

PropertySurveying.co.uk