Wigan house prices drop for first time in months
The latest data from the Office of National Statistics shows that the average property in the area sold for £132,962 – significantly lower than the UK average of £232,554.
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Hide AdAcross the North West, property prices have risen by 3.3 per cent in the last year, to £162,915. The region underperformed compared to the UK as whole, which saw the average property value increase by 3.5 per cent.
The data comes from the House Price Index, which the ONS compiles using house sale information from the Land Registry, and the equivalent bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The average homeowner in Wigan will have seen their property jump in value by around £25,000 in the last five years.
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Hide AdThe figures also showed that buyers who made their first step on to the property ladder in Wigan in September spent an average of £117,742 – around £22,000 more than it would have cost them five years ago.
Frances Clacy, research analyst at estate agents Savills, said a slowdown in growth compared to the previous year was caused by more stringent lending criteria.
She said: “The higher value markets of London, the South East and the East of England, where affordability is most stretched, have been particularly impacted. For the capital, house prices are now lower than they were a year ago.
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Hide Ad“Economic and political uncertainty, particularly surrounding the outcome of Brexit, also means buyers have become more cautious.
“On the flipside, the West and East Midlands have been the strongest performing regions over the past year. Despite these strong levels of house price growth more recently, average values still remain below the £200k mark for both regions.
“We are forecasting that the Midlands, North, Scotland and Wales will all outperform the UK average over the next five years as these regions have fewer constraints on mortgage affordability and have more capacity for further house price growth.”
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Hide AdBetween August last year and July this year, the most recent 12 months for which sales volume data is available, 5,053 homes were sold in Wigan, 4 per cent more than in the previous year.
The highest house prices in the country in September were found in London’s Kensington and Chelsea, where properties sold for an average of £1.5 million – 19 times the cost of a home in Burnley, where the average property cost just £79,400.