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The sunny south

8th July 2008 | back to article listings BACK    print this article PRINT

It's grim up north, so they say. Chips and gravy, coal mines, rain, terraced houses and an unhealthy obsession with pies have painted a rather dull, stereotypical picture of working class life in towns and cities higher up than Birmingham on a map of England. Although the growth of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle have changed these views in recent decades, there is one perception of life down south that, whether it's true or not, is unlikely to ever change - it tends to be sunnier and warmer. And two sets of statistics released this week have suggested that this may be the case for the property market in the south, with the housing sector in the north looking considerably gloomier.

Figures compiled by the Centre for Economics and Business Research for the latest Chesterton Poll of Polls have shown that house prices in London have grown by 6.4 per cent in the year up until June. Furthermore, 19 of the 20 most expensive locations in the UK can be found in the capital. In the rest of England and Wales, it was revealed that annual price growth dropped for the tenth month in a row. Robert Bartlett, the chief executive of Chesterton, gave an overview of the different aspects of the current property market. "As oil and food prices continue to drive up the cost of living and mortgage lending remains hard to secure, we are not expecting dramatic changes in house prices whilst transaction volumes remain so low," he stated, but acknowledged that are positive aspects to be seen by buy to let investors. "However, much like our British summer, glimmers of sunshine can be seen; annual house prices are still ahead of last year and half of London saw a month-on-month increase in house price. This is borne out by the extraordinary performances of a number of our offices. Lettings continue to grow from strength to strength."

In fact, the strength of the buy-to-let industry was also picked up on by Countryside Properties, as it cited the new residential lettings survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The body revealed that yields from rental properties in the south-east of England increased considerably over the past 12 months, and Countryside Properties has stated that this is luring new investors to take advantage of the gains to be made by buying up developments in the region.

Although recent figures from Nationwide suggested that the storm in the property market that led to house price drops may be subsiding - values were down by 0.9 per cent during June 2008, half the fall recorded the previous month - for some areas in the UK, it seems there was only ever a slight risk of showers.

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