Hometrack: house prices down year-on-year

Hometrack has declared that the housing market in England and Wales has seen a “sluggish” start to the year, after an unexpectedly strong end to 2009.

In its January survey, the housing intelligence firm detected a 0.1% rise in the price of the average home, compared with December; however, the year-on-year rate of grow stood at a disappointing minus 0.1%.

Both the number of sales agreed and new buyer registrations declined at the start of 2010, while the average time to sell a property increased for the first time in 12 months, to 8.6 weeks.

January price rises actually occurred in just three regions of England or 7% of postcodes: Greater London, the South East and the South West.

Notably, the average price of property in rising markets was 35% above the national average (£212,000 compared to £157,000) and Hometrack points out that this highlights how pockets of the market are showing price rises which “may well deter continued interest”.

In addition, the analyst believes high value property in better off areas is resulting in a skew in transactions that “has led to the general health of the housing market being overstated”.

The firm concludes: “The market bounce-back of 2009 was distinctly one dimensional and the outlook for 2010 is less certain.”

Hometrack’s research is based upon 6,185 responses from 1,805 agents and surveyors across all 2,300 postcodes in England and Wales.

However, its outlook for the housing market stands in stark contrast to that of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which recently predicted a 6% rise in UK house prices in 2010, and a 20% gain by 2013.

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