Northern Ireland has the top ten fastest rising property hotspots in the UK. A regional survey looking at 489 towns in Northern Ireland found that property values have gone up 55% since last year – property in Craigavon in 2006 was an average of £118,551, now that average is £183,795. Overall the average price of property in the region is £203,815, with Belfast enjoy a 61% rise.
In fact Northern Ireland is enjoying the steepest increase of property prices anywhere in the UK since 1973. This is no doubt due to the end of violence in province; since the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998, prices have jumped 281% compared with 179% in the rest of the UK.
So, the top ten UK hot spots in full – Craigavon, Newtownards, Newry, Larne. Newtownabbey, Armagh, Downpatrick, Belfast, Antrim and Lisburn.
But what about just England? Here are the top ten English property hot spots – Cheltenham, Openshaw, Godalming, Wapping, Bilsington, Tetbury, Ormskirk, Spennymoor, Penn and Edenbridge.
But, of course, experts are warning that such astronomical growth can’t last. Remarkably, despite the housing boom, Northern Ireland trails behind the rest of the UK economically. The average income of households is 20% lower than the rest of the UK, with the average UK salary at around £24,000; this means that someone buying alone would need a mortgage of more than eight times their annual pay to afford a property.
The survey also found that the cheapest town in UK in which to buy a property was Lochgelly in Fife, the average house price being £104.738, whilst the average price of a home in Edinburgh now stands at a record £207,669.
In England research shows that a north/south divide is emerging showing that prices are continuing to rise in London and the south east and west, whilst prices are slowing in the north.
