London house price growth slows: How do the other regions compare?
UK house price growth slowed to 9.4 per cent in the year to September, figures published Tuesday showed, down 11 per cent from last month.
Between August and September, monthly growth fell 0.2 per cent – the first drop in 17 months, the figures from Nationwide showed.
As the building society's chief economist, Robert Gardner, pointed out, regional prices showed a lot of variation.
Despite its growth slowing faster than the national average, London was still looking at a 21 per cent rise in the last year:
Annual house price growth in London slowed somewhat, from 25.8 per cent in Q2 to 21 per cent in Q3. Nevertheless, at £401,072, average prices in the capital reached a record high, 31 per cent above their 2007 peak. In the UK as whole, prices [were] around 2 per cent above their pre-crisis peak (excluding London they are less than 1 per cent above their 2007 peak).
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As we can see, there have been differing fortunes between different regions while all suffered in the wake of the financial crisis.
London's recovery has been much faster than other regions and has reached far greater heights. However, in the third quarter of 2014, the most robust growth was elsewhere:
While it seems likely buyer demand is dampening somewhat as talk of a rise in interest rates becomes more fervent, long-term trends are still strong.
Gardner again:
While September saw a slowing in house price growth, the picture on a quarterly basis (July, August and September combined) was still relatively strong, with all 13 UK regions recording annual price gains.
Like Halifax, Nationwide uses its own mortgage lending data to build the index. As such, it isn't as eclectic a source as the Land Registry, which draws on a wider range of data. Still, as Nationwide operates nationally, the data is a useful window into the market.
Here are how the Land Registry, Halifax, and Nationwide's indices compare:
Desktop users can scroll down to see an interactive graph comparing all regions. The dropdown menu in the top right allows for the removal of certain regions for better comparisons.