House prices fell 1.3% last year
The latest figures from the Land Registry show that house prices fell by 1.3 per cent in England and Wales in 2011, with the average property costing £160,384 in December.
Prices remained stable at the end of the year, with no change between November and December 2011.
The only place in England and Wales where house prices increased in December was London, where they rose by 0.8 per cent to an average of £345,298.
Over the year, property prices have increased by 2.8 per cent in the capital with estate agents reporting an increase in buyers from overseas who are exiting countries involved in the eurozone crisis, including Greece, Italy and Spain, in order to finder a safer place to invest.
Hartlepool recorded the biggest fall in property values in 2011, with an annual decline of 17.5 per cent.
For the north-east as a whole, house prices fell 7.1 per cent year-on-year in December 2011, more than any other region.
In the north-east the average house cost £99,000 at the end of the year.
The Land Registry also reported a fall in the number of completed sales in 2011.
Meanwhile, a survey by estate agent Rightmove suggests that 60 per cent of people who are moving house believe it is a buyers’ market, while just 13 per cent believe the balance of power is in sellers’ hands.
People in Scotland are most likely to perceive the housing market in this way and Londoners are the least likely.
Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, said: “While parts of the stock-starved South, and London in particular, are feeling relatively bullish about prices, the turmoil of the last few years has wreaked havoc in parts of the buyer-blocked North.”
Rightmove’s ‘Consumer Confidence Survey’ was based on 32,111 online responses in January 2012.
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