Pandemic house price boom triggers increase in value of property purchases
Homebuyers forked out almost £260.5 billion on residential property, with just over a million homes sold across the UK, in 2021, at an average price of £259,576.
This was revealed in research conducted by property platform Boomin, which also reported a 37% increase in the total value of property purchases on the previous year.
The increase, Boomin said, was driven by a pandemic house price boom and a 25% annual increase in the number of homes sold.
Read more: Halifax reveals latest on UK house prices.
Boomin analysed property market performance based on the total number of transactions seen across the UK and the total value of these transactions based on average property values.
In 2021, the South East saw the most market activity with 158,885 homes sold across the region, totalling £56.3 billion.
Scotland was also one of the busiest areas of the UK property market with 113,437 transactions, while property sales also exceeded the 100,000 threshold in the North West (110,781), East of England (105,079) and South West (101,369).
In terms of the largest uplift in market activity, Northern Ireland ranks top, where there were 41% more homes sold in 2021 when compared to the previous year.
London also saw one of the largest increases in market activity with a 31% increase in transaction levels, along with the South East. The capital city’s total value of homes sold hit a huge £49.5 billion across the 98,179 property sales to have completed.
According to Michael Bruce, chief executive and founder of Boomin, there has been an incredible number of homes sold during the pandemic, and the total value of these transactions runs into the billions – driven by consistently increasing property values that are yet to show any signs of slowing.
“However, with interest rates rising along with the cost-of-living, the market is predicted to cool over the coming year. As a result, we should see both transaction levels and market values start to slide and we’ve already seen signs of this during the final quarter of last year,” Bruce stressed.
Boomin said that total estimated value in this research was based on the number of transactions multiplied by the average house price in each area. Transaction volumes and average house prices were sourced from the Gov.uk UK House Price Index.
