United Kingdom house price growth slowed in July following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, official data showed on Tuesday.
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Average house prices now stand at £292,921 meaning the average homeowner is sitting on £12,101 more equity than this time previous year according to Your Move and Reeds Rains’ monthly house price index.
However, agents cautioned that the apparently robust figures could reflect prices agreed in the weeks running up to the June 23 poll, which was then expected to deliver a majority for Remain.
House prices in England and Wales continued to grow in August, the Your Move Reeds Rains house price index shows.
First-time buyers paid, on average, £182,756 for their first property in Great Britain (figures are not available for Northern Ireland) – up 8.1% over the year.
London continued to be the region with the highest average house price at GBP 485,000.
England’s South East saw an 11.9% increase in average house prices to £313,000 while prices in the East jumped 13.2% to £274,000.
In London, although transactions and price growth have slowed in the most expensive boroughs, more affordable areas have seen impressive annual increases.
“Looking to the long-term, we expect people’s desire to own a property, combined with the persisting lack of housing stock, to cause house prices to increase in the future”, says McPhillips. The resilience of the United Kingdom housing market is rooted in the structural mismatch between supply and demand.
As the effects of Brexit on the housing market become clearer in the coming months, Thomas Fisher, an economist at PwC, said: “Our own expectation is that the United Kingdom housing market will cool not crash”.
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Rob Weaver, director of investments at crowdfunding business Property Partner, said: “The housing market is emerging from its traditional summer slumber, with mounting evidence suggesting that predictions of a post-referendum house price crash were distinctly premature. In our main scenario, average United Kingdom house price growth is projected to decelerate to around 5% in 2016 and around 1% in 2017”.
