UK House Prices Still Rising

Despite widespread feeling that house prices were, at last, slowing, new figures released by the country’s biggest mortgage lender Halifax, suggest that house prices, are in fact, still rising on the back of a strong economy and shortage of homes for sale.
Prices rose by 1% in March taking the average house price to £194,362. All parts of the UK have seen an increase in house prices most notably Northern Ireland, once the second cheapest place to live in the UK, have seen house prices rise by 76% since the beginning of 2005, making it now one of the most expensive places to buy property in the UK.
With prices creeping above the reach of many first time buyers some lenders have reacted by offering a previously unprecedented forty or even fifty-year mortgages, commenting that the twenty-five year standard was no longer relevant and that many first-time buyers who are in their twenties would not be retiring until they were in their early seventies. They also claim these mortgages offer greater flexibility, although some would also add, greater interest payments.
This development comes after Abbey announced that it would offer some customers five times their annual salary rather than the usual three or four.
With now over a decade of booming house prices these developments in mortgage lending offer some hope to first time buyers eager to get on the much vaunted property ladder. It may also come as a relief to the parents of first time buyers who have been assisting their children with deposits and even helping with mortgage repayments and in some cases re-mortgaging their own properties to help their children on to the property ladder.
Halifax and Nationwide note that there are emerging signs that finally house prices may start to slow at the end of the year.