Biggest monthly asking price rise for six years, says...

The latest monthly index suggests that the average asking price in England and Wales has jumped 1.5 per cent in the past month.

This figure, produced by the website Home, means the full 12 month increase is now 2.0 per cent.

Home says the supply of new sales instructions is now back to near-normal levels in England, although not in Wales or Scotland where many restrictions still apply.

The strongest individual English region was Yorkshire, where average asking prices rose 2.7 per cent in the past month; meanwhile in London the supply rate of new instructions has completely recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

The total sales stock on the market across England and Wales again shows a small month-on-month gain but remains significantly down year-on-year by 12 per cent.

Despite a substantial rise of 1.6 per cent this month in terms of asking prices, the East of England remains the UK’s worst-performing region with the year-on-year change in average asking price just in the red at 0.4 per cent.

Overall, the number of new instructions in the UK during June was just nine per cent shy of the figure for June 2019 and Greater London vendors added four per cent more stock than a year ago.

This month’s hike in the national average price of 1.5 per cent is the largest monthly rise since February 2014 - and that’s before the impact of the new Stamp Duty holiday.

“We can expect the current wave of demand to be sustained, at least in the short term. Property investors as well as homebuyers look set to return to the market amidst such favourable conditions and this will have two key effects” predicts Doug Shepherd of Home.

“Firstly, the additional demand will push up prices; secondly, supply in the rental market will increase. The latter will be good news for renters as increased supply will help attenuate rent rises and improve choice.”