House prices in your area

I've heard a lot about the North/South divide in relation to house prices and how that's largely becoming a myth although I'm sure prices in London still lead the country.

Anyway, I'm mainly wondering if most people have been seeing increases or decreases in property prices in their area and if their own house has gone up a little or a lot or (probably unlikely) has gone down in value.  In the 3 1/2 years since we bought our house I'm noticing nearly 30% higher asking prices!

upmystreet.com is a good site for seeing average prices of houses in a postcode area over a quarterly average.  Unfortunately, they haven't updated the figures so the latest is 3rd quarter 2006.  They show terraced houses around here for £207,000 but it's actually closer to £230,000.  It'd be interesting to know what the actual selling prices are but there's not too many terraces in this area and I don't think any have sold for a while.

Meanwhile, trying to get on the property ladder can be very difficult and it can be a stretch to move into a bigger house, especially with stamp duty rising from 1% to 3% over the £250,000 selling price.  I think that is rediculous that there is such a jump and that more gradual increases are not applied.  Certainly in the south east £250,000 will not get you a mansion by any means!

Flats in the city centre of Hull can sell from £100,000 up to £325,000 depending on what building, floor and how many rooms there are. One of the penthouses in the building where I am is on the market for £325,000 but a one bed in this same building is on the market for £104,000.

Jamie and I are going to have a hell of a time getting on the property ladder. We can spend £500 a month on rent on a really nice city centre flat, so we could easily afford that in mortgage payments. It's just the depressing fact that we can only get about £50,000.... And that will get a house on a council estate.

House prices in York vary considerably. A 2-bedroom house can range from £120,000 to £325,000 depending on location.

Yo Matt!

I'm trying to watch the prices as carefully as possible,  I want to sell soon and invest abroad (US or Canada) - the current interest rates as well as the likliehood of them increasing to 6% by the end of 07 makes me want to sell sooner rather than later - so hopefully avoiding a substantial drop in value and/or a better chance of selling. You are right about the date of the 'selling price' sites, they always seem to be a good 6 months out - i guess to compensate, I look through various property sites and local papaers and watch the listings to see what the asking price is and if the property is still around a week or 2 later, if it's gone then it's probably sold close to or got its asking price , if its still hanging around, then could be overpriced or not quite such a nice property for the price (condition, decor, layout, area etc) not very accurate - but at least it's something!

Getting on the property ladder is beyond insane now, the mortgage companies are offering 5x salary mortgages, the UK consumer and the UK culture of buying a house and putting everything on credit, is just locking more and more people into financial difficulties - and the usual 'stick head in sand' approach to controlling it is ever popular.

I think £250,000 in the south east barely gets you more than a new build 2 bedroom apartment! - but of course, the government will just see it as more opportnity to raise extra revenues from stamp duty!
as for pricing - Around here £100K will only buy a studio. £120-160K a 1 bedroom flat, £150-235K a 2 bed flat, £180-210 1 or 2bed house, £220-300 a 3bed house and £285-400k + a 4 bed house.

Increase those amounts substantially for going into the various London boroughs.

Add in the fact that the Olympics costs have tripled (quadrupled in some reports) ALOT of people are going to see their council tax rise to help pay for it.

have the government announced a proportionate increase in income levels?!  nope..  they haven't

Start tightening your belts now everyone ...

DtM! West London & Slough UK!

We bought our house 11 months ago (Newcastle upon Tyne) and are seeing identical houses on the estate sell for 20% more now!  

Just doing a quick search for 3+ bedroom houses in my postcode shows a range of £91,950 for a terraced fixer-upper to £497,500 for a Victorian estate w/ lots of period features.  

Upmystreet says the average for my postcode is £171,997, and I do think that's right on target.

we bought our two-bedroom mid-terrace in birmingham for £130,000

We bought our end terraced house in Stoke, Coventry six years ago for £48,000.
Today it sold for £145,000. Terraced houses on our street usually price around £125,000 we just got really really lucky!

I don't bother paying attention to them anymore because they're off the charts.

A newspaper the other day said the average price of a two-bedroom 'home' here is £200,000.

Today it sold

Woohoooo!!! Congratulations!!!!!

congrats on selling your house pebbles- great news

Dh already had the house we live in now before I even knew him lucky for me. But he paid I think around £48.000 pounds for the house about 7 or 8 years ago. our house is a 2 story 3 bedroom house. the house's around us are selling for anywhere between £125,000-£155,000 pounds.   we live outside of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire County

Congrats on selling your house.  

The original selling price for the terraced 2 BR we are in was around £99k when it was newly- built, about 6 years ago.  We bought it for nearly £180k last summer.  But this development is a good area--nice houses, in varying sizes (terraced cul-de-sacs to semis to large detached homes) and a very desirable area for families, as well as singles or couples.  One of the reasons we bought here is because we think, in the long run, it was a good investment, in that the houses in this neighbourhood do tend to sell quickly whenever one comes onto the market.  

When we were searching last year, we saw so many places in the city that were at least as much, if not more--and were barely habitable!  Really run-down, poorly kept, any attempts at refurbishment often abandoned or done badly.  This was the market we were seeing in our price range, for older houses.  Anything decent was so outrageously high as to be ridiculous.

But we feel lucky we were able to get in here, and it's much nicer, and a much quieter and nicer area, than anywhere else we looked at.

We're in Salisbury.

p.s--Congrats on selling your house, Pebbles!

We bought our end terraced house in Stoke, Coventry six years ago for £48,000.
Today it sold for £145,000. Terraced houses on our street usually price around £125,000 we just got really really lucky!

yay!! congrats!!

Here's an interesting article about house prices:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6457341.stm

Yahoo has a site http://uk.houseprices.yahoo.net/ that shows the price a house was sold for in a postcode or town.  I'm not sure how up to date it is but it shows the last sold price for some houses.  Our next door neighbor bought his not long after us and it doesn't show up on there but other neighbors do.

It also has average house prices for postcode areas.

It's amazing to see a terraced house on our street going for £117,000 6 years ago, so cheap!

There's been a house on the market for ages across the way from us that clearly belonged to a relative who died and the family just puts up ludicrous prices to see if they can get lucky.  The problem is, not only does that side of the road suffer from lack of natural light but there's been nothing done to it, I remember looking around in there years ago and thinking there's no way anyone's going to buy it unless it was seriously discounted.
They've been putting up asking prices of £210K, £220K!  And these houses were build in the late 1960s, fairly standard, nothing period or fancy.

By the way, we're in a village a few miles outside High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.  I find that unless you go into Wycombe itself or somewhere like Aylesbury to find anything of a substantially bigger size (good sized 4 or 5 bedroom) than the average terraced or semi 3 bedroom house you're going to have to pay a minimum of £325K (almost $700K!) which is going to be in the fixer-upper category, how can anyone afford that??