Yahoo Finance Detached homes overtake terraces as highest growing property type
Price growth of the average detached house rose at the highest rate last year, overtaking terraced homes for the first time in 10 years.
Research by Savills found that in England and Wales, excluding London, the average sale price of a detached home increased by 4.8pc to £388,926.
By comparison, terraces rose by just 1.5pc in 2017, but have risen in price by 29pc since 2007. The rise of the detached home and displacement of terraced houses in the last year can partly be explained by a slowdown of growth and activity in property markets in the south of the country.
Frances Clacy, an analyst at Savills, said: “In the years after the global financial crisis, we’ve seen major towns and cities – where there are higher concentrations of terraced homes – outperforming their rural counterparts. The traditional Victorian terraced home is also a very popular choice with first-time buyers and second-steppers buying a first family home.
“Terraced houses in the South East and the East of England have performed particularly well, and hotspots in Cambridge, Oxford and Virginia Water have an average second-hand terrace sale price of over £800,000.”
It also reflects the increased growth and activity within markets such as the Midlands and the North West, as the South slows down due to a crunch in affordability. Hometrack’s house price index, which tracks UK cities, has found that Birmingham and Manchester have both recorded strong growth in the last eight months and have displaced London, Bristol and Cambridge at the top of the price growth list.
In turn it underlines the type of housing that is prevalent in those areas, says Mark Holden, head of residential sales at Savills in Wilmslow. “From experience, those residing in the North West have consistently preferred detached houses to semi-detached houses if they can stretch to afford the additional space,” he said.
Ms Clacy added: “Lower house price-to-income ratios across the regions mean affordability is less of an issue than in London and the South East, and we believe there is more capacity for further growth.
“Over coming years we expect to see more buyers looking to take advantage of the North-South divide and get more for their money.”
London was excluded from the research as the high growth rate of flats in the capital skews the countrywide results; last year the price of apartments sold in the capital rose by 7.2pc, compared to 4.1pc in the rest of England and Wales. There, both terraced houses and flats have recorded growth over 75pc in the last 10 years.
