TOWN AND CITY TRACKER: Property price performance analysis

Kate Faulkner looks at the most recent property price data available across our towns and cities, revealing top and under-performers.

At the city level, we have two main sources of property price data: Hometrack, which is around six weeks into the home buying and selling process, and the Land Registry data, which is anything from a few months to six months or more out of date.

City data shows that half (15) of the cities we track are still seeing property prices lower than they were in 2022 when the Liz Truss government crashed both the financial and property markets.

Long term, half (15) of the cities have seen property prices exceed the average 3% annual inflation since 2005, showing in real terms, property prices aren’t rising at anything like the pace they were from 2000 to 2005 when pretty much every property price doubled.

Leeds and Edinburgh jumped into top spot for the Land Registry, while all the top performers have changed for Hometrack. Property price growth is lower than it was last month, even for the top performers, ranging from 5% growth year-on-year to 9% for Land Registry and 2-3% for Hometrack.

Meanwhile for the lowest performing areas, Croydon, Oxford and Portsmouth are new this month for Land Registry, while for Hometrack, most of the lowest performers are new, bar Aberdeen, Brighton and Hove.

Appendix: City/town property indices price tracking

For city/town tracking, we use Land Registry (government data) and Zoopla/Hometrack. The Land Registry data is useful because we can analyse how property prices have changed over time and this helps us to put today’s price information into context.

The Zoopla/Hometrack data is useful as they take into account the change in mix of property transactions during the pandemic to houses away from flats. This has meant the likes of the Land Registry and other indices have over exaggerated price changes year on year.