February 2017 - Completions Still Down & Prices Moving Up

The residential property completion data for February 2017 is fresh in so it’s time for our monthly review of the volumes and prices.  As before, we’re doing a month on month comparison on the price paid data going back to February 2010 looking at the main property types of: 

1. Detached
2. Semi-Detached
3. Terraced
4. Flats/Maisonettes. 

The average price across all property types for February 2017 was £360,683 which is a 7.64% increase on the same time last year but a drop from January 2017 of 10.11%.  For completions there is a 256% drop for the same time frame, so178 in February 2016 versus 50 in February 2017.  Given February is a short month, seeing an 18% increase in completions against the longer month of January has to be seen as encouraging. 

Looking back over previous Februarys there has been a 15.25% increase across all property types from £305,693 in February 2010 to £360,683 in February 2017.

One of the first points we see when looking at the average price achieved by property type is that there is a much more even spread.  With the exception of February 2014, the average February prices have shown that semi-detached, terraced and flat/maisonettes have been clustered together and are disparately lower than detached properties.

To move from a flat/maisonette to a terraced would mean a 35.45% increase in price with the move from a terraced to semi-detached and from a semi-detached to a detached being 24.5% and 26.53% respectively.

The property type that had the highest percentage increase was semi-detached with a 20.87% (£76,019) year on year increase.  Next were detached properties with a 7.48% increase (£37,093).  Both terraced properties and flat/maisonettes dipped down 10.19% (£28,023) and 13.13 (£23,313) respectively.