City near tail end of house prices index

CARDIFF has posted one of the lowest house price growth figures in a new property index.

But despite only scoring joint 14th out of 20 cities, the Welsh capital still saw property values rising by 5% year-on-year.

The average house price in the city now stands at £193,700.

By contrast, Manchester is now leading the way for property price growth.

Hometrack, which tracks the movements of house prices across the 20 biggest cities, said London is now in 10th place in terms of yearon-year house price growth.

House prices in Manchester grew by 8.8% year-on-year in February. Portsmouth had the next highest annual house price growth, at 8.1%, followed by Bristol at 8%, Glasgow at 7.7% and Birmingham at 7.4%.

In London, annual house price growth has continued to slow, reaching 5.6% in February – the weakest rate seen there since May 2013.

Hometrack said house price growth in London is now acting as a drag on the overall rate of house price growth across the UK’s major cities.

The average annual house price increase across the UK’s major cities is 6.4% – higher than in both London and Cardiff.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen remains the only major city in the index where house prices have fallen yearon-year, with a 5.9% tumble.

Hometrack said affordability levels in southern English cities like London, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge is stretched, with the housing market also being affected by weaker investor demand and the impact of the Brexit vote.

The report continued: “While growth in Manchester has hit close to 9%, the supply/demand dynamics are not strong enough in regional cities outside southern England to support double digit rates of house price growth.”

Richard Donnell, insight director at Hometrack said: “Buyers are fully aware of the Government’s plans and timescales for Brexit but there remains huge uncertainty over what this means for the economy over the next two to three years and beyond.

“In cities where affordability remains attractive we expect demand to hold up in the short term albeit with slower growth in sales volumes. Overall we continue to expect the rate of house price growth to moderate over the rest of 2017.”