Homes across England and Wales are worth 3.1 per cent more than a year ago, says property analyst Hometrack.
In the past four weeks alone, the value of the average property has soared by £6,923, more than £200 a day.
A typical three-bedroom semi is now worth £252,418.
There
is still such a shortage of supply – with buyers flooding the market
thanks to the Government’s Help To Buy scheme – that sellers are almost
always getting their asking price.
The proportion of the asking price achieved was 95.2 per cent in October, up from 94.7 per cent in September.
This is just half a percentage point off the record 95.7 per cent at the height of the property boom in 2007.
As the resurgence continues, Halifax has also revealed that a record seven out of 10 Britons think house prices will continue to go up over the next year.
The biggest increases are in London, up 0.8 per cent month-on-month with sellers typically achieving 97.2 per cent of their asking price.
Across the country, prices were up everywhere except the North-east.
The
increases were 0.1 per cent in the East Midlands and the North-west,
0.2 per cent in Wales, Yorkshire and Humberside, 0.3 per cent in East
Anglia and the West Midlands, 0.4 per cent in the South-west and 0.7 per
cent in the South-east.
Help To Buy, which allows buyers to secure a mortgage with a five per cent deposit, is partly driving the boom.
The other factor
is the shortage of properties for sale. This month new sales listings
have dropped by 1.6 per cent, while buyers registering with estate
agents were up by 2.0 per cent.
Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said there is a “chronic lack of supply”.
He
added: “Growth in new sales being agreed is running at four to five per
cent per month and this is continually eroding the stock of homes for
sale. In contrast, levels of demand have grown. Improving confidence
amongst buyers has been fuelled by low mortgage rates and positive news on a recovering housing market.”
The
Halifax survey reveals that fewer than half (41 per cent) think it will
be good to sell their property in the coming year, compared to 57 per
cent who think it will be a good time to buy.
This indicates a continuing shortage of properties, forcing prices up.
Meanwhile,
another report reveals parents are paying tens – and sometimes hundreds
of thousands of pounds – over the odds to live near the country’s top
state schools.
The average price of a home in
the postal districts of England’s top 30 state secondary schools is
£295,972, £31,500 more than those in neighbouring areas, Lloyds Bank found.
In London, parents desperate to get their children enrolled
at Henrietta Barnett school in Barnet, north London, pay £400,000 more
for homes up to £863,340 inside the catchment area, compared to £460,740
outside.
In Kingston upon Thames, south-west
London, parents pay more than £600,000 – double the cost of average
local homes – for children to be eligible for a place at Tiffin School
for boys and Tiffin Girls’ School.
Nitesh Patel, of Lloyds, said demand had led prices to rocket “out of reach for many buyers on average earnings”.
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