Top ten property boom towns: Olympics and BBC Media City create house purchase frenzy in Newham and Salford
02-09-2014
Olympics boom: Newham house sales rocketed in the first half of 2013
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London Borough of Newham saw a 62% rise in house purchases last year
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Four regions saw all towns record a yearly boost in property sales
The number of hot spots has increased dramatically compared to 2012
By Lee Boyce
Property sales grew at their fastest annual rate for ten years in the six months to September 2013 wit the east London borough of Newham and Salford in Manchester seeing the highest transaction levels, research claimed today.
It says the housing market revival has spread across England and Wales and is not just concentrated on London and the South East.
The North, the West Midlands, Wales and London were named in the Lloyds Bank research as the regions with the biggest proportion of 'property hotspots.' All towns in these regions recoded a year-on-year increase in home sales.
The area with the biggest annual increase was Newham, the borough where Stratford and the Olympic stadium is situated, with a 62 per cent jump.
Outside London and the South East, Salford in the North West was the biggest riser, with a 51 per cent increase in property sales.
A possible reason for this is the recently opened BBC Media City in the Manchester suburb, which brought with it thousands of jobs.
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Across England and Wales, 98 per cent of towns were found to be ‘hot spots’ - a term coined for places that saw an annual uplift in sales. A year earlier, just over one quarter of towns saw a year-on-year increase.
The report, which used Land Registry figures, found there were 396,756 house sales in the six months to September, marking an increase of more than one fifth on the same period in 2012 and the highest year-on-year increase in a decade.
But property sales were still two fifths below a market peak of 673,699 sales in the half-year to September 2006 at the height of the boom.
Media City: The new development has drawn in thousands of jobs to Salford
In further evidence that the market pick-up is becoming increasingly widespread beyond London, Lloyds said that regionally there has been a ‘remarkable consistency’ in the growth in property sales.
Both the North West and the East Midlands saw a 23 per cent rise in activity between March and September 2012 and the same period a year later. The North East saw the lowest rise over this period, at 19 per cent.
Marc Page, mortgages director at Lloyds Bank, said: ‘Low interest rates, improvements in consumer confidence and Government schemes, such as Help to Buy, all appear to have contributed to the rise in home sales.’
Crowborough in East Sussex saw the biggest drop in home sales over the same period, with a 10 per cent fall in transactions, followed by Caterham in Surrey and Hyde, Greater Manchester which make up two and three in the list.
On Thursday, Halifax reported house prices jumped by almost £2,000 in January, as buyers hunted new homes amid a dwindling supply of good properties for sale.
Property prices have leapt almost £13,000 in a year, to an average of £175,546, the mortgage lending giant’s index showed.
TOWNS WITH BIGGEST RISE IN HOUSE SALES (SIX MONTHS TO SEPTEMBER 2013)
1. Newham, London, 62%
2. Redhill, South East, 56%
3. Farnborough, South East, 52%
4. Salford, North West, 51%
5. Walton On Thames, South East, 50%
6. Ware, South East, 49%
7. Hinckley, East Midlands, 48%
8. Chester, North West, 47%
=9. Spalding, East Midlands, 46%
=9. Dorchester, South West, 46%
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TOWNS WITH BIGGEST FALL IN HOUSE SALES (SIX MONTHS TO SEPTEMBER 2013)
1. Crowborough, South East, 10%
=2. Caterham, South East, 9%
=2. Hyde, North West, 9%
4. Dewsbury, Yorkshire and The Humber, 7%
5. Corby, East Midlands, 5%
6. Haywards Heath, South East 3%
7. Falmouth, South West, 2%
=8. Uckfield, South East, 1%
=8. Selby, Yorkshire and the Humber, 1%
Marc Page, mortgages director at Lloyds Bank, said: ‘Low interest rates, improvements in consumer confidence and Government schemes, such as Help to Buy, all appear to have contributed to the rise in home sales.