House sales at 10 year high

Newham, Redhill, and Farnborough experience highest rises

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Property sales between April and September 2013 rose to their highest level since 2007, according to new figures out today.

The Lloyds Bank report for England and Wales shows that sales in this period were 21 per cent higher than over the same months in 2012, and marks the highest year-on-year increase in a decade. However, property sales were still 41 per cent below the peak of 673,699 in the comparable period in 2006.

The East London borough of Newham saw the largest increase in home sales (up 62 per cent), followed by Redhill in Surrey (56 per cent), Farnborough in Hampshire (52 per cent), Salford in Greater Manchester (51 per cent) and Walton on Thames in Elmbridge (50 per cent).

Crowborough in East Sussex saw the largest decline in home sales over the same period with transactions down 10 per cent, followed by Caterham in Surrey and Hyde in Greater Manchester (both 9 per cent).

Marc Page, Mortgages Director at Lloyds Bank, said: "Since spring 2013 housing activity in England and Wales has been on the rise. In addition, the number of towns in the survey recording an increase in transactions has grown over three times compared to the same period in 2012. Low interest rates, improvements in consumer confidence and Government schemes, such as Help to Buy, all appear to have contributed to the rise in home sales."

The latest figures from Halifax show that house prices rose 1.1 per cent in January this year. Their report last week indicated that there were more than one million housing transactions in 2013, the first time they have reached that mark since 2007, while home sales rose for the ninth successive month in December 2013 to 103,040, 30 per cent higher than in December 2012.