Cornwall records highest house price growth, says Halifax |
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Published
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Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:25
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LONDON: Cornwall has emerged as the hotspot for house price growth with demand for holiday homes among Britons going up. It recorded the highest price gains in the past decade, according to a survey by Halifax.
Halifax said the average price of a property in Cornwall has gone up by a phenomenal 268 per cent since 1996 to 195,388 pounds in the first quarter of 2006. Nearby Devon witnessed a trebling of prices to 178,663 pounds during the period.
The county with the lowest price growth is Aberdeenshire in Scotland, where the average house price remained substantially above Cornwall's in 1996 at 70,000 pounds, but now at 141,000 pounds.
The boom in prices in Cronwall is reflected across the west of the country with all the 10 fastest growing counties falling in south-west and Wales. Gainers in Wales included Anglesey, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire, Caerphilly and Powys, where average prices have moved up more than 200 per cent.
The study revealed that the only place in the area where a house hunter can strike a bargain and get a place below 100,000 pounds is Blaenau Gwent.
The west of England has always been a popular location for Britons to relocate and this factor along with affordable property prices there has contributed to the huge increase in prices in the region, said Halifax's chief economist Martin Ellis.
The Isle of Wight and East Sussex in the south east figure in the top 20 locations for house price growth. Surrey is the most expensive county with an average price of 298,835 pounds, followed by Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
Thirteen of the 20 counties with the highest price increases are in Wales, four in the South West and one in the West Midlands.
The 19 regions, which had recorded the lowest rise in average prices, are all in Scotland. They include besides Aberdeenshire, Dundee, Renfrewshire and Argyll.
The survey did not cover London property market. However, the average increase for London house prices is around 224 per cent and it is not at the top of the list.
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Government study shows house price inflation slows down in February 