House Price Inflation Continues to Climb

Monday, March 8 2004 House price inflation in the UK has risen again, to 9.7%, up from 8.3% in December, according to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's (ODPM) figures released today. This was caused mainly by an increase of 0.6% prices between December and January, compared with a fall of 0.7% over the same period last year, the Government department claims. Locally, the research found annual inflation in England rising to 8.8% from 7.7%, an increase reflected in all the English regions except for the east and the east midlands, but the strongest overall rise was in Scotland, up to 23.3% from 15.5% in December. The ODPM also found that inflation in the north east, north west and Yorkshire in England remain substantially higher than in the rest of England, and by contrast, London the east, the south east and the south west were all under 10%, a considerably slower rate. However this rise is not as great as the rise in inflation for January which other mortgage lenders calculated. Both Halifax and Nationwide calculated increases of around 17% for the first month of the year, but this may be due to the lack of seasonal adjustment made by the ODPM, and the fact that straight cash purchases are not included in their surveys.