University towns see premium on house price rises

HOUSE PRICES in university towns and cities have increased by nearly £34,000 on average over the course of a three-year degree, a report has found.

This means a recent graduate faces paying £33,949 or 18 per cent more typically to live in the place where they went to university than they would have done in 2015 when they started their degree, Halifax found.

Across the 66 places Halifax looked at, the average house price has grown from £187,636 to £221,585 over the past three years. Someone on a four-year degree course will have seen average house prices in university towns increase by £44,823 or 25 per cent over the period since 2014.

And over the past five years, the growth in house price values has been even more significant, averaging £48,941, Halifax found.

London was excluded from the study, due to having different factors driving its housing market, as a global city.

Halifax found house price growth has been so strong in some university towns that home buyers can face a premium as high as 60 per cent to live there compared with the surrounding local area.

Winchester topped the premium table with the average property worth £179,931 or 60 per cent above the average for Hampshire.

Cambridge commands the second highest premium, with buyers paying £147,590 or 49 per cent more compared with the average property in Cambridgeshire, followed by Bath, where buyers face a premium of £101,974.

Some 40 out of the 66 university towns in the study were found to have higher prices when compared with the surrounding area.

Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax, said: “Given the demand for housing in student towns, and the potential of promising returns for private landlords, it is unsurprising that house prices in the majority of these areas compared to the county come with a premium.”

Bradford and Stoke-on-Trent also have average house prices which sit lower than the county average. Hull, Middlesbrough, Pontypridd and Belfast were also found to be among the least expensive university towns and cities.