UK house prices: High first-time buyer confidence heats up the housing market in August
The market for new buyers, who have been boosted by government schemes such as help-to-buy, has had a strong summer.
First-time buyers sales climbed 11.9 per cent in August compared with the same month last year to match July’s eight-year high of 30,200, figures released today by estate agents Your Move and Reeds Rains (YMRR) reveal.
The average price paid by a first-time buyer was £155,652 in the three months to August. London first-time buyer properties were almost double that and the priciest at £302,010.
“As real-term wages rise and job security is increasingly taken as a given, renters are feeling, in ever larger numbers, that they have ability to overcome cost caveats and turn their property-owning dreams into reality,” said YMRR director Adrian Gill.
Rising prices in the capital are leading first-time buyers to seek out cheaper places. Prices in the south east have risen at a quicker rate.