Average house prices have risen by just under £3k this month
The UK property market continues to resist predictions that the market will witness a significant slump this year as the average house price rose by nearly £3k this month. Despite forecasts of a 10% fall in prices this year, after low growth and high mortgage rates, the average home on the market this month is £365,357, a rise of 0.8%.
While this is below the typical 1% March rise over the past two decades, it still reflects a market “on a much more stable footing than many anticipated”, according to property website Rightmove, which published the data. Over the year so far, newly-listed homes have risen 3% over the last year, and the typical asking price has increased by £2906, which shows ‘cautious signs of recovery’ following the mini-budget last year.
Rightmove has also claimed that buyer demand was 6% higher than the same period in 2019. Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property science said, 'The pace of the market reached an unsustainable level in the last two years and was on track to slow to a more normal level, though the speed of this slowdown to more normality was accelerated by the reaction to September's mini-Budget.’
'The beginning of the spring season sees stability and confidence continuing to return to the market as it recovers from the turbulence at the end of 2022.’
Although more expensive properties account for a percentage of the rise in asking prices, first-time buyer properties are also recovering with prices just £500 lower than their record-setting price of last year, and the number of sales is just 4% lower. House prices rose rapidly throughout the pandemic, and the latest dips in prices seem to reflect a return to a normal pace of growth rather than an all-out crash.