UK House Prices Exceed Pre 2008 Crash Highs

It’s taken 12 years, but house prices in England have finally increased above their 2007 peak, new research from Zoopla reveals.

While London recovered in just three years, after foreign investors flooded the market to make the most of the weak sterling, it’s taken till December 2019 for Newcastle to exceed its pre-crash highs, with the average house price now £129,700.

On the whole, it was southern England which recovered the fastest; Oxford and Cambridge took just four years. Despite this initial post-crunch bounce back, it’s now the northern cities which are outstripping the rest of the UK when it comes to house price growth.

In the last year, prices in Nottingham and Leicester increased by 5.3% to £160,000 and £183,600 respectively. Conversely, London increased by only 2.3% to £482,000, Cambridge by 1.9% to £415,200 and Oxford just 0.3% to £416,600. Looking at the whole of the UK, Edinburgh saw the most significant increase over the past year at 5.9% to £241,900.

What’s causing this? Well, according to Zoopla, the number of people looking for a new property is still considerably higher than the number putting their property on the market. In fact, their figures show that demand from potential buyers has increased by 26% in the year to January 2020, whereas the number of houses on the market has risen by just 2.6% in the same time. This sustained imbalance in supply and demand continues to push prices up, and Zoopla says this is “a trend we expect to remain in place in the first half of 2020.”

28th February 2020