UK property prices reached £218,000 – increased by an average of £16,000 in September, as revealed by official data today.
What the report revealed?
The Office for National Statistics said the average cost of a home rose by 7.7 per cent in the year, while climbing 0.2 per cent between August and September.
Homes in England saw the biggest price jump with an annual rise of 8.3 per cent, while those in Scotland saw prices rise of 3.4 per cent.
The average cost of a home increased by 12.1 per cent in the East of England, while London stood next where prices rose by 10.9 per cent, the UK House Price Index revealed.
With an average price tag of £448,000, London continues to be the most expensive area in the UK.
On the cheaper front, the average cost of a home in Wales is £146,000 and £124,000 in Northern Ireland.
Among all, the cheapest area is Blaenau Gwent in South Wales, where properties cost around £76,000.
In terms of supply and demand, new listings fell by 6.6 per cent in August – the ONS said, citing recent findings by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Richard Snook, a senior economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: ‘We now have three months of post-Brexit official housing figures, which show price growth remaining robust, but fewer properties changing hands.
‘High prices are causing some buyers to stay out of the market altogether. The ONS data show residential transactions in September were just 93,000, 11.3% lower than the previous year.
‘This implies that underlying demand may be weakening as property becomes less and less affordable.’
The ONS plans to introduce a new measure of inflation in March 2017, to include the cost of owning a home. Called CPIH, the measure adds changes to the cost of owning a home to other price changes tracked in the Consumer Price Index.
