Yorkshire house price league table puts coast at the top

The latest Land Registry index shows that house prices in England rose by an average of four per cent over the year to March 2018, bringing the average value to £240,949.

However, they fell by 0.3 per cent between February and March this year. The East of England saw the biggest monthly price increase, with a rise of one per cent and the North East experienced the greatest fall, down by 1.5 per cent.

London saw a month to month price fall of 0.9 per cent and recorded the greatest annual fall, down by 0.7 per cent. This is the lowest figure recorded in London since September 2009, when annual prices fell 3.2 per cent and is symptomatic of a slowdown that started in 2016.

Yorkshire prices fell by 0.3 per cent between February and March, bringing the average price to £155,251. The annual changes between March 2017 and March 2018 are broken down into local authority areas and show that the Scarborough, which includes Whitby and Filey, saw the biggest rise in values, up by 12.9 per cent. Ryedale, which includes the booming market town of Malton, was second in the Yorkshire table with an increase of 7.1 per cent, followed by Barnsley with seven per cent and Calderdale with 6.9 per cent.

The areas with the lowest annual growth were Hull with a 0.9 per cent shift, Bradford with a 1.5 per cent rise and York with 1.6 per cent and Harrogate with 2.2 per cent.

The remaining areas showed the following increases: Craven, 3.3 per cent; Doncaster 2.3 per cent; East Riding 4.7 per cent; Hambleton 3.4 per cent; Kirklees 4.5 per cent; Leeds 5.1 per cent; North Yorkshire 5.5 per cent; Richmondshire 5.1 per cent; Rotherham 3.1 per cent; Selby 5.4 per cent; Sheffield six per cent and Wakefield five per cent.

Estate agents have complained about the lack of stock and the the latest Land Registry data on sales volumes, which compares January 2017 with January 2018 bears this out.

The national average was minus 12 per cent with almost every area in the UK showing a decline.

All property types showed an increase in average price in March when compared with the same month in the previous year. Detached houses in England showed the biggest uplift, rising by 5.1 per cent to £368,000.

Flats and maisonettes showed the lowest increase of 1.1 per cent bringing the average price to £224,000,

This weaker growth was driven by price falls in London, which accounts for around 30 per cent of England's flats and maisonettes transactions.

In March 2018, the most expensive area to live in was Kensington and Chelsea, where the cost of an average house was £1.3 million. In contrast, the cheapest place to purchase a property was Burnley, where an average house cost £78,000.

*Rightmove report that asking prices have hit a record high although the number of sales agreed so far this year has fallen by 5.4 per cent compared to April last year.

The property portal adds that average new asking prices are up 1.1 per cent, though they are down in 0.2 per cent in London and 0.1 per cent in the south east.

Time on the market fell to 59 days on average during April.

Rightmove's Miles Shipside said: “After six years of continual year-on-year price growth, the current market is becoming increasingly price-sensitive.”