Nationwide Building Society figures show typical home in northern England now costs less than half that of a home in the south

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The average UK house price has exceeded £200,000 for the first time, but a typical home in northern England now costs less than half of one in the south, according to Nationwide Building Society.

Property values rose 0.8% month-on-month in March across the UK, taking the typical price of a home to £200,251, the financial services company said. However, within the figures, the price gap between the average house price in the south of England and that in the north has widened to nearly £163,000.

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The average home in the south, including the south-west, south-east, London and East Anglia, costs £313,670. A typical home in the north, which the study includes as the Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, the north-west and the north-east, now costs £150,917.

Across the UK generally, the year-on-year rate of house price growth accelerated to 5.7%, the fastest pace since February 2015. A 3% stamp duty surcharge for buy-to-let investors, which came into force on Friday, will have pushed up prices, Nationwide said.

The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) has reported seeing a “bottleneck” of investors trying to beat the three percentage point increase on previous stamp duty rates.

Nationwide said the outer metropolitan London area was the strongest-performing region in the first quarter of 2016, with house prices up by 12.2% on a year earlier to reach £344,371 on average.

The outer metropolitan district covers areas such as central Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Luton, Medway, Reading, Slough, south Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns, south Essex, St Albans, west Kent, Windsor and Maidenhead, and Wokingham.

For the fourth time in five years, London trailed in second place in the quarterly regional figures, showing how house price growth has rippled out from the capital. It also recorded the second-fastest rate of annual house price growth, with an 11.5% increase taking the average property value there to £455,984.

Scotland and the north of England were the only UK areas where property values dipped year on year, with falls of 0.2% and 1.1% respectively. The average house price in Scotland is £139,911.

In Wales, property prices were 1.7% higher than a year earlier, at £141,525 on average. In Northern Ireland, property values increased by 1.8% year-on-year to reach £123,225 on average.

In East Anglia and the south-west, property values were up by 5.8% year-on-year, while in Yorkshire and Humberside they edged up by 1.9%, and in the north-west they increased 0.5%.

Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said a recent pickup in activity was likely to have been partly driven by the stamp duty changes. He said the pace of house price growth may start to moderate now that the changes have come into force.

But he added: “It is possible that the recent pattern of strong employment growth, rising real earnings, low borrowing costs and constrained supply will keep the demand/supply balance tilted in favour of sellers and maintain pressure on price growth in the quarters ahead.”