Construction Loans News:- House prices in Leicester have grown by 4.8 percent while Aberdeen has seen a 4 percent fall, according to the latest figures from Zoopla’s UK cities index.
The property website said a 1.9 percent increase in house prices across the 20 cities studied reflected more sustainable growth levels.
It added it was the first time in seven years that the fastest growing city had increases of below 5 percent.
Zoopla’s research and insight director, Richard Donnell, said: “A change in buyer mix from cash buyers to those with mortgages, plus wide variance in the recovery of house prices is sending mixed signals about current housing market activity.”
He said the number of cash buyers, particularly in southern England, reflected a decline in investor demand.
But pointed to UK Finance data showing 723,000 new loans for a home purchase in the 12 months to July – the highest level since 2008.
“This supports our view that the decline in London housing sales has bottomed out with a small increase in market activity resulting from greater realism over pricing after three years of modest price falls,” said Mr. Donnell.
Construction Loans by HZA
Brokers Hank Zarihs Associates said development finance lenders’ growing appetite to offer construction loans for the right type of schemes in London reflected this.
Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, and Oxford were among the 12 cities which had lower rates of price inflation than a year ago. Oxford was marginally lower than last year at 0.4 percent while Portsmouth stayed the same in keeping with flat or falling house prices in southern England cities.
Zoopla said prices in southern cities, while 56 percent higher than the 2007 peak, had stagnated over the last four years.
Manchester top performer in the north
House prices in Manchester had grown the most and were 22 percent higher than the market peak in 2007, said Zoopla. Prices were about 12 percent higher in Leeds and Sheffield compared with the peak while Liverpool had at last seen an increase of 0.8 percent on 2007 figures.
Newcastle, Aberdeen, and Belfast were the three cities where average prices were still below 2007 peak levels. Zoopla said Belfast prices were excessively over-valued in 2007 and were now more sustainably priced.
