The building
society said that the
annual change picked up from 3.3% a month earlier.
Property values rose by 0.4% in July
compared with June, taking the cost of
the average home to
£195,621.
Demand for housing remained
"encouraging", the report said, but supply strength was "unclear".
Mr Gardner said that the house price
growth might be "stabilising close to the pace of earnings growth"
which had historically been around 4% a year.
Estate agents and analysts point out
that the market could be affected by a potential change in interest rates at
the turn of the year.
"The one blot on the horizon is a
potential interest rate rise, which may slow down the mainstream market as
buyers become concerned that their mortgage will cost more," said Jonathan
Adams, director of estate agency Napier Watt.
"Buyers often do not realise the
impact of a rate rise until the first one actually happens."
Edinburgh
home prices rise faster than rest of UK: Edinburgh News
Home values
across the Capital (Edinburgh )
are growing faster than in any other British city – sparking warnings that
properties are locked in a cycle of “hyper inflation” which will put them
beyond the reach of families and first-time buyers.
Figures
from property website Zoopla have revealed that Edinburgh prices have surged 8.2% since
January – an average £20,465 increase since the start of the year.
The
rise, which puts the Capital ahead of second-placed Colchester in Essex , means the average home here has a price tag of
just under £270,000 – seven-and-a-half times a typical salary in the city.
Property
experts said the jump provided evidence of the core strength of Edinburgh ’s housing market and was partly down to a
post-referendum confidence bounce after Scotland
voted to stay in the UK .
But
critics warned that the trend was a blow for residents struggling to get on the
property ladder.
Councillor
Gavin Corbett, Green economy spokesman, said: “It’s really bad news for Edinburgh as a city and
for its economy.
“The
problem of hyper house price inflation is a kick in the teeth for younger
households looking to buy a first home and to that growing army of Edinburgh residents who
rely on private landlords for a home.
“It’s
also seriously bad news for the local economy because it traps capital in
decades-old bricks and mortar rather than funding the kind of small business
and social enterprise which are the basis of our real wealth.”
He added: “Far from being a cause for celebration, we should be looking at
measures to ensure house prices are kept within reach of ordinary families.”
The
latest jump in values comes after the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre
(ESPC) revealed average prices in east central Scotland fell by half a per cent
between April and June 2015 compared with the same period last year.
ESPC
analysis indicated that this could be explained by the surge in higher-priced
properties brought to market at the start of the year due to the introduction
of the land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT).
Maria
Botha Lopez, ESPC business analyst, said that, despite LBTT-related
uncertainty, Edinburgh
was continuing to see good growth.
“If we compare the first six months of this year with the same period last
year, we see a 9% growth in property prices year on year,” she said. “There was
a temporary effect of LBTT following its introduction on April 1, which drove
up average selling prices, but looking at the first six months on the whole
gives us a better chance of balancing out the LBTT effect.”
Lawrence
Hall, of Zoopla, said: “The real winner here is Scotland . The surge in property
values can, in part, be explained as a post-referendum bounce, as businesses
and capital flood back to Scotland ,
after withholding investment during the volatile September referendum period.”
Vancouver rent hikes more swell than tsunami: Business Vancouver
Vancouverites love to complain about
real estate prices whether they are buying or renting.
The latest “sky-is-falling” stories
have been about a “rent increase tsunami” predicting huge rent increases
because of the plummeting vacancy rate.
Yes, vacancy rates have dropped. But vacancy rates for rental apartments in
Greater Vancouver have been close to or under 1% for a couple of years, said
Robyn Adamache, principal market analyst with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
So this isn’t a huge change.
And while new stock from purpose-built
rentals has been small (from 2009 to 2014 there were only 1,700 rental units
built in Greater Vancouver), most rentals come from the secondary market such
as suites in homes or condos that are rented out. And there were 13,000 of
those added to the rental pool during 2009-14, Adamache said.
And during the past few years, rents
have been pretty steady, keeping close to the maximum amount the province
mandates for continuing tenants, Adamache said. This year that number is 2.5%.
So maybe the sky isn’t falling on renters. Nor is it necessarily going to crash
onto homeowners.
A report out from TD Economics last
week labelled Vancouver ’s
real estate market as a “cautionary yellow,” rather than low-risk green or
high-risk red. One of the reasons: house prices in Vancouver , despite the 10% year-over-year
growth in June, have actually increased on average about 2% to 3% per year over
the past three to five years. In Toronto , home
prices have increased on average about 6% to 6.5% over the past three to five
years, making that city riskier than Vancouver .
But still not that risky.
By contrast, the housing crash in Toronto and Vancouver
in the early 1990s followed price gains in the 20% to 25% range, the report
said. And during the five-year run-up to the 2008 housing crash in the United States ,
prices were climbing 14% annually in some of the most overheated cities.
So while rents are high and housing
prices are ridiculous, the numbers tell a much calmer story.
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