New figures from the Nationwide Building Society show that UK house prices rose again in June, by 0.3 per cent to 1.9 per cent, the fastest rate since September 2010.
The building society said that the rise was due in part to the Government’s Funding for Lending scheme (FLS), which allows lenders to borrow money at very advantageous rates, as long as they pass the savings on to businesses and individual borrowers.
The figures mean that house prices in the second quarter of the year are so far up by 0.4 per cent on the quarter before and up 1.4 per cent compared with the same period in 2012.
Properties in London saw the highest price hikes, up 5.2 per cent in the second quarter on a year-on-year basis, taking the average price of a house in the capital 5 per cent higher than their 2007 peak of £318,214.
Meanwhile, a survey by property website Zoopla has revealed that the number of UK homes valued at more than £1m has soared by nearly a third over the past 12 months, up 80 per cent in the past four years.
The survey also showed that the number of “million-pound streets” in the UK, where the average property value is more than £1m, has jumped by nearly a quarter over the past year.
There are now 8,230 such streets, including nearly 3,000 in London, with another 930 in the capital’s wealthiest satellite towns, such as Kingston upon Thames, Richmond and Harpenden.
According to the survey, the Surrey village of Virginia Water, with only 3,000 residents, is the first place in the UK outside London where house values average more than £1m. Kensington Palace Gardens, in west London, was once again the most expensive street, with an average value of £36m, a staggering 156 times the cost of the average home in the UK.
