U.K. House Prices Post 2019’s Biggest Increase in December
Average house prices rose 1.7% from November to 238,963 pounds ($314,000), Halifax said in a statement on Wednesday.
(Bloomberg) --
U.K. house prices saw the strongest gains in all of 2019 in December, according to mortgage lender Halifax.
Average house prices rose 1.7% from November to 238,963 pounds ($314,000), Halifax said in a statement on Wednesday. From a year earlier, prices increased by 4%, the top of the lender’s forecast range.
The vote to leave the European Union in 2016 has kept the U.K. property market subdued for years. While Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory last month may remove some of the uncertainty, most forecasters see small gains in the coming year.
“We expect uncertainty in the economy to ease somewhat in 2020, which should see transaction volumes increase and further price growth made possible by an improvement in households’ real incomes,” said Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax. “We expect a modest pace of gains to continue into next year.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Swint in London at bswint@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Gordon at pgordon6@bloomberg.net, Lucy Meakin, Andrew Atkinson
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