House prices in England and Wales are still growing, according to data released by the Land Registry, but the rate of growth is slowing a bit. Prices in September rose .4%, bringing the annual growth rate down to 8.7% from 9.4% in August. The cost of the average house rose to £183,896 in September.
London housing still leads the way, growing at a faster rate than the rest of England and Wales. Home prices in London averaged £354,272 in September, up 1.3% from August. The annual rate of increase for London now stands at 16.5%. Prices in London are moving so fast that houses below the £100,000 price are almost non-existent. In July a measly 47 properties were sold for that amount, and some analysts expect low-cost housing to all but disappear in the capital before too long.
“The evidence of the divergent performance between regions persists,” said the Registry in an article carried by the BBC. “The September data shows that for the sixth consecutive month, the rate of monthly increase for London house prices remains clearly greater than that of England and Wales as a whole.”
The number of property sales per month is slowing down as well. The last quarter for which these figures are available, April to July, shows that there were an average of 102,367 sales per month. That is a drop from 109,316 in the same period for 2006.
