One area in Merseyside stands above the rest in terms of rising property prices.
House prices across the country shot up this past year, with the UK seeing the second-largest annual rise in well over a decade. Merseyside saw the average price reach £184,880 in April, according to the latest Land Registry data.
That was 0.6% above £183,859 in March and 10.2% more than a year earlier, when the figure was £167,764. In St Helens, the average house price rose by 15.3% over the year to £172,119 – the biggest increase of anywhere in Merseyside.
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St Helens was followed on the house price increase list by Knowsley, where it went up 13.5% to £165,792, while in Liverpool it rose 10.5% to £174,890. Overall, Sefton had the highest average house price, at £201,519, although that represented a slightly more modest 9.8% annual increase.
Wirral saw a 6.8% rise to £195,860 in April 2022 from £183,327 in April 2020. Across the UK as a whole, the average home was valued at £281,161 in April, which was 12.4% (or £31,000) higher than £250,210 a year previously.
That was the second-largest rise in more than 15 years after prices increased by 13.3% in the year to June 2021, which was in part driven by a rush to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday put in place to boost the property market during the pandemic.
Commenting on the latest figures, Chris Jenkins, Office for National Statistics house prices statistician, said: “While annual growth nudged up again in April, this was mainly due to falls seen at this time last year from changes in the previous stamp duty holiday. Wales and Scotland saw the highest growth with London, again, growing the slowest.
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“Rental prices continued to grow steadily overall. However, while still lagging other nations and regions, growth in London continues to pick up.”
Despite rocketing house prices in many parts of the UK, some property experts are predicting the market could slow down in the coming months due to rising interest rates. The Bank of England recently raised interest rates for the fifth time in a row, to 1.25%, in a bid to put the brakes on rising prices by making borrowing more expensive.
Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said this could be “as good as it gets” for property owners. She added: “These figures reflect house purchase decisions made much earlier, when we had only had the very first of the interest rate rises, and the full horror of the energy price cap hadn’t kicked in. In many cases, buyers will have made an offer before the invasion of Ukraine, and well before it had a chance to feed so spectacularly into inflation."
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