Money News

House prices hit 2006 levels

By Dominic Welling dominic.welling@consumerchoices.co.uk

House prices increase as sales jump by a quarter between May and June. But July prices are down.

The average house price in England and Wales has hit £166,072, and is now around the same level as it was during the summer of 2006, according to the Land Registry.

Property prices increased 0.1% between May and June, according to the Land Registry’s house price index, which means that the average price has jumped 8.4% in the last year.

The Land Registry said that all regions in England and Wales experienced increases in their average property values over the last 12 months.

In addition, the most up-to-date figures available found that during April 2010, the number of completed house sales in England and Wales rose by 26% to 49,323 from 39,280 in April 2009.

Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, said: "The latest statistics show that the housing market is slowly recovering. This is to be welcomed, but many people are still excluded from owning a home because lending remains unfairly restricted.”

Prices fell back in July, however, according to the latest Nationwide house price index.

The UK’s biggest building society reported that house prices fell back by 0.5% in July as buyer demand remained weak.

Furthermore, the annual rate of house price inflation slipped back further from 8.7% to 6.6%.

Martin Gahbauer, chief economist at Nationwide, said: “So far in 2010, demand from homebuyers has made little progress in building upon the recovery seen during much of 2009.

"A combination of restrictive credit conditions and uncertainty about the future economic outlook continues to limit the pool of buyers to those with relatively large financial resources. Many potential buyers still lack the confidence to purchase their first home or trade up when faced with uncertainty over future income and employment prospects. “