After a roller-coaster year for house prices the results are in: the London borough of Greenwich is the place for price rises.
According to data from Halifax, house prices in Greenwich rose 24.6 per cent over the course of 2014, far above the national average of 8.5 per cent and almost twice that of the London average of 13 per cent. The net plus for the year brings the average cost of a house in the UK to £209,428, Halifax says.
Here is a breakdown of the top ten gainers in 2014:
Crawley is a notable addition: it is the only local authority outside London to make the list.
That’s the good news for sellers, but what about buyers? Houses in Bury, a town between Boulton (to the west) and Rochdale (east), have reduced in price by an average of 4.8 per cent during 2014, while Keighley, northwest of Leeds, is 4.4 per cent cheaper than it was a year ago. All of the fastest 10 fallers are in either the North of England, Wales, or Scotland.
The majority of these gains came in the first half of the year: towards the end of 2014 each three month period showed lower growth, with expansion falling dramatically in October.
Buyer sentiment had eased strongly by November, when mortgage approvals, one measure of market sentiment, were down 24.7 per cent from January’s 76-month high of 48,753 according to the British Bankers Association. The figure constitutes a drop of 19.5 per cent compared to November 2013.