Press Release Summary: The house price figures published by Halifax this week may have sent some very mixed messages to those looking to invest in property. While the headline-grabbing figure was an overall 2.5 per cent drop in price in March, the regional variations may have made startling reading for those investing in the west Midlands.
Press Release Body: The house price figures published by Halifax this week may have sent some very mixed messages to those looking to invest in property. While the headline-grabbing figure was an overall 2.5 per cent drop in price in March, the regional variations may have made startling reading for those investing in the west Midlands. Talk of an oversupply of flats in central Birmingham may have been one thing, but the five per cent drop recorded in the region\'s prices would have been food for thought to say the least.
Yet at the same time, some regions did see a rise and, perhaps oddly, the largest of these also occurred in the heart of England, with the east Midlands property enjoying a 2.2 per cent rise.
Commenting on this contrast today, Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, suggested the contrast was clear proof that too much should not be read into one month\'s figures. He said: \"In months gone by, the east and west Midlands have shown fairly similar results. However this time, contrary to the west Midlands fall, the east rose by 2.2 per cent. This highlights the current anomalies and the fact that you cannot look at one survey result in isolation.\"
Such an assertion may be borne out by the Land Registry figures for England and Wales in February, which were published last week. In complete contrast with Halifax, these list the west Midlands as the best performing region, with a 1.3 per cent gain in prices. Even allowing for the different months covered, there is clearly no consistent trend there. Indeed, should the March Land Registry figures show a substantial drop in west Midlands prices, it may be the case of an overstated raise and overstated fall cancelling each other out.
A deeper examination of the comparative figures reveals other apparent patterns. Not only is there an east-west split in the midlands in the Halifax figures, but also one across England and Wales as a whole. To the east of the midlands, East Anglia showed the second highest increase at 1.6 per cent while to the west Wales had the second biggest drop at 4.7 per cent.
Further south, London property saw the third highest rise at 1.4 per cent and the surrounding south east avoided a fall with prices static, whereas the third highest fall was in the south-west at 2.6 per cent. In the north, the picture is less clear, with the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber both down 0.5 per cent, while the north (comprising the north-east plus Cumbria, with the bulk of the population on the east side in Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside) saw a 1.2 per cent rise. It all looks not so much a north-south divide as an east-west divide.
Yet the Land Registry figures showed something different altogether. Here, the aforementioned west Midlands rise was the highest of just three regions that increased prices, the others being Yorkshire and the Humber and the east Midlands. So in this case the midlands, far from being at polar opposites, formed two-thirds of a contiguous bloc of growth in the middle of England with declining prices in all other directions.
Given such contrasts, it may indeed be justified to take every regional figure for one month with a pinch of salt. While local developments can have various effects (such as Liverpool\'s high profile from its year as European Capital of Culture and the effect of smaller city bonuses on London), the margins for error and short-term fluctuations may explain much. As investors look ahead to a possible rate cut tomorrow and seek out new opportunities, they may well reflect on how much they should read into each and every piece of data.
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2025
