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Annual house price growth in the UK accelerated slightly in July, while the monthly measure rose by the 12th month in succession, figures on Tuesday showed.
Mortgage lender Nationwide's latest tracker showed house prices surged 11% year-on-year in July, quickening slightly from a 10.7% hike in June.
The monthly rise came in at a more modest 0.1% in July. House prices had risen 0.2% in June from May.
Growth fell short of FXStreet cited consensus, however. Annual growth had been forecast to quicken to 11.5% and monthly growth of 0.3% was expected.
‘Prices rose by 0.1% month-on-month, after taking account of seasonal effects the twelfth successive monthly increase, which kept annual price growth in double digits for the ninth month in a row,’ Nationwide Chief Economist Robert Gardner commented.
‘The housing market has retained a surprising degree of momentum given the mounting pressures on household budgets from high inflation, which has already driven consumer confidence to all-time lows. While there are tentative signs of a slowdown in activity, with a dip in the number of mortgage approvals for house purchases in June, this has yet to feed through to price growth.’
The UK housing market re-emerged from the initial spring 2020 lockdown strongly, benefiting from temporary stamp duty relief.
In March 2021, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor at the time, extended the stamp duty cut granted in 2020 to the end of June 2021 at a £500,000 nil rate band, which was then tapered to a £250,000 threshold until the end of this past September.
Since then, there have been concerns the housing market would cool, with rampant consumer price inflation and rising interest rates also hitting the sector.
Data on Friday showed UK mortgage approvals declined in June, against a backdrop of rising UK interest rates.
The number of mortgage approvals for house purchases in the UK fell to 63,726 in June from 65,681 in May, the Bank of England said.
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