Graph Of The Week: House Prices Rising?
Here’s a little something that’s bound to upset the folks over at housepricecrash.co.uk.
It’s from the last Land Registry report (actual sold property prices for March) and it may well be a very early sign that the housing market has hit the bottom and is starting to turn upwards.
Although house prices in England and Wales have fallen by 16.2 per cent year-on-year, the downward spiral seems to have halted, and (cover your ears house price crashers), in March prices actually rose in four regions.
London, interestingly, recorded the smallest monthly rise (0.6 per cent, the first such increase since March 2008) with the North East (1.8 per cent), the South West (1.1 per cent), and Wales (1.0 per cent) doing better.
Now it’s too early to say that this is the start of a property market revival … but would you bet against house prices being higher this time next year than they are now?
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“would you bet against house prices being higher this time next year than they are now?”
Yes I would. As I’m sure you know, in the last crash in the early 90s, house prices rose over 22 times in 70 odd months.
Another thing to know is that LR data is based on value not number of transactions. That means, as they write, that the effect of more expensive houses biases the figures.
Bruce - you make a fair point about minor fluctuations being common in the midst of a downturn. And it remains to be seen whether the market flatlines or records an improvement in the coming months.
As for the Land Reg report - yes, transaction levels are down, but their index is produced by Calnea Analytics, who weight the data to take account of biases. See the notes at the end of this:
http://www1.landregistry.gov.uk/assets/library/documents/hpi-eng-300409.pdf
Mike