Number of houses sold over £1m in one month up 48% year-on-year

“Publication of the Land Registry’s latest figures for April confirm a number of suspicions,” says Henry Pryor, founder of Primemove.com.

"The number of transactions – even once they have been ‘seasonally adjusted’ shows that under 100,000 properties were being sold per month on average.”

This is despite a record number of potential buyers and is due to the constricted supply of properties earlier this year. Our own figures on the supply of properties suggest that this will increase next month but annual house price inflation in London kept the average for the country at over 9% although Kensington & Chelsea’s 24% contrasts with the 1.4% seen in Nottinghamshire

“Considering the lack of supply that we experience in the first quarter of the year it is not surprising that volumes are down” said Pryor. “What is quite extraordinary however are the number of properties over one million pounds that have sold in the past year. In London, over 271 were recorded in February alone and in England and Wales it was 435. A rise of 48% each.”

“Our figures confirm that the total number of properties over £1m on the market is now about 9% more than a year ago with the postponed deadline of 1st June for the introduction of HiPs being just one factor in this. The increase in property values however have helped more speculative sellers into the market keen to cash in while the market is so frothy. It seems clear to us that house price inflation is being driven by London and the South East which seems to have it’s own dynamic. In other parts of the Country however prices are pretty level with inflation matching increases in many areas.”