Britain’s buoyant housing market showed no signs of cooling in February with the average price of a home 9.4% higher than a year earlier according to Nationwide.
It was the strongest rate of annual growth since May 2010, driven higher by a 0.6% increase in prices on a monthly basis, a slightly slower pace than January’s 0.8% rise.
UK house prices have now risen for 14 consecutive months on the building society’s measure, with the average home carrying a price tag of £177,846 in February – the highest since April 2008, before the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers which intensified the global financial crisis.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said that the UK housing market was strengthening against an improved economic backdrop, low borrowing costs and a lack of properties on the market. He said: “Demand continues to be supported by record low interest rates, improved credit availability and rising consumer confidence thanks to the healthy gains in employment recorded in recent quarters.
“Price growth is being supported by the fact that the supply of housing remains constrained, with housing completions still well below their pre-crisis levels, which was already insufficient to keep up with the pace of household formation.”
via The Guardian
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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