A last-minute dash by first-time buyers to beat deadlines on avoiding stamp duty last month sent house prices jumping by 2.2%, lender Halifax said today.
The Coalition raised the threshold on stamp duty to £250,000 to help the housing market but lowered it back to £125,000 two weeks ago, sucking more housebuyers into the net.
The temporary fillip to the market took the average UK property price up to £163,803 in March, although prices are still down 0.6% year on year. Halifax’s Martin Ellis said: “Efforts by first-time buyers to beat the expiry of the stamp duty holiday at the end of March have probably increased sales in recent months and may have helped to support prices.”
Halifax’s less volatile quarterly measure showed house prices down 0.1% during the last three months, while its predictions for a broadly flat housing market this year remain unchanged.
Analysts were unimpressed by March’s apparent surge. Capital Economics’ Ed Stansfield said: “March’s jump in the Halifax index simply offset the falls recorded in the previous six months or so.”
Halifax’s March rise also contrasts starkly with the Nationwide’s house price index, which revealed a 1% fall in prices during the month. Stansfield added: “The month-by-month volatility of both illustrate the problems of accurately measuring house prices, let alone their short-term movements, in an environment in which transactions are running at levels that are at best half the level that would typically be regarded as normal.”
