x
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies to enhance your experience.
Graham Awards

TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Buy a home for under £150,000? You’ll be lucky…

The number of locations where average house prices still stand at below £150,000 has shrunk by 28 per cent in recent times. 

Agency Savills has analysed average house prices in local wards across Britain, calculating average house prices in the year to the end of September. 

In total it looked at 8,694 wards where there were at least 10 sales in the year under review.

Advertisement

Only 873, or roughly 10 per cent, now have an average house price below £150,000.

Just five of those are in the South of England - specifically Great Yarmouth, East Suffolk and Fenland. None remain in London, the South East or South West.

Meanwhile, in the North East of England, the proportion of wards where the average house price is below £150,000 has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time - although at 48 per cent it has the highest of any region.

By contrast, the number of wards where the average sale price was over £500,000 increased by 38 per cent from 889 in 2020 to 1,224 in 2021. 

This included a 19 per cent increase in London where the average sale price was over half a million pounds in 63 per cent of its 635 local markets.

Outside of London the number of wards with an average sale price of over £500,000 increased by a much greater 48 per cent, with a 34 per cent increase in number across the South East of England - meaning that one in three locations across the region saw the average sale price exceed this benchmark.

Savills describes as “astonishing” the fact that the South West experienced a 146 per cent increase in the number of wards where the average house price exceeded £500,000, such that they accounted for more than 10 per cent of 1,013 wards in the region. 

This growth was led by Devon, Somerset - including Bath - and Gloucestershire, particularly in locations favoured by those moving out of urban settings during the pandemic. 

The agency says there are now 95 wards in Britain where the average sale price topped £1m.

“While the recent burst of house price growth which was kick-started by the stamp duty holiday, continued momentum in the market has been fundamentally underpinned by low-interest rates and people’s reassessment of their housing needs” explains Lucian Cook, Savills’ head of UK residential research. 

“In some parts of the UK, this resulted in a significant widening of house prices. Typically the areas which have seen the biggest growth reflect how more affluent households locational preferences have changed.

“But the mini-boom in the housing market also means the range of locations accessible to a household with a more limited budget of £150,000 has shrunk substantially. This is likely to come more sharply into focus as interest rates start to creep upwards.  

“With that in mind, the Bank of England’s future stance on mortgage regulation is key. If it is relaxed this would provide more headroom for future price growth in the medium term, but it would also reduce the protection it currently affords against a future downturn.”

icon

Please login to comment

MovePal MovePal MovePal
sign up