MortgagesDec 29 2014

Greenwich sees biggest annual house price jump: Halifax

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Greenwich sees biggest annual house price jump: Halifax

The London borough of Greenwich recorded the biggest rise in house prices among major UK towns and cities over the past year, according to Halifax.

Based on its own house price data, the average house price in this south east corner of the capital was 24.6 per cent higher than in November than in the previous year, up from £263,183 to £328,044 in 2014.

This is a significantly faster increase than in London as a whole, which saw price growth of 13 per cent over the same period.

However, nine of the 10 areas with the strongest price growth in the past year are in London: Ealing, 24.5 per cent growth; Tower Hamlets, 22 per cent, Kingston upon Thames, 21.4 per cent and Sutton, 20.7 per cent.

Crawley in Sussex - the third largest rise of 22.4 per cent - was the only non-London borough to make it into the top 10.

Sheffield was the top performing area outside the south, with prices rising by an average of 13.7 per cent over the past year.

The wider picture for the north was more mixed, with the towns experiencing a decline in the average value of homes over the past year are all outside southern England.

Bury in Lancashire (-4.8 per cent), Keighley in West Yorkshire (-4.4 per cent) and Nuneaton in Warwickshire (-3.2 per cent) recorded the largest price falls.

Four of the 10 weakest performing towns were in the north west; besides Bury, they are St. Helens (-2.6 per cent), Preston (-2 per cent) and Rochdale (-0.9 per cent)

Craig McKinlay, mortgage director at Halifax, commented: “Continuing improvements in the economy, rising employment and low mortgage rates will no doubt have supported housing demand and, combined with shortage of homes coming on to the market, will have contributed to rising property values.

“At the other end of the spectrum, several of the towns experiencing price falls in the past year are still suffering from relatively weak employment conditions, which may have had an adverse impact on their local housing markets.”

peter.walker@ft.com