House Prices Hit Record High But London Cools

The average UK house is now worth £296,549 according to property website Rightmove (LSE: RMV.L - news) .

This new record price is 5.6% higher than October 2014 and 0.6% higher than the average listed price in September.

Behind the surge is high demand for first-time-buyer properties, with prices up 4.9% on last month and 9.6% (+£16,105) over the past 12 months.

Not only is demand very buoyant for first-time buyers, the supply of starter properties coming on the market is very subdued.

Rightmove said: "The number of first-time-buyer properties (two bedrooms or fewer) coming to market is down by 8% on the same period a year ago".

The picture is a little bleaker in London with some of the higher value areas experiencing falling prices as the fallout from George Osborne's stamp duty reforms begin to take affect.

The average price in Wandsworth fell 6.7% in October alone, while prices in Richmond (Taiwan OTC: 2743.TWO - news) are now 0.6% lower than they were last year.

Osborne's reforms mean that although the majority will end up paying less in stamp duty, buyers of homes costing more than £937,500 now pay more.

Those spending more than £5m now have to pay 11.1% of the purchase price in stamp duty, equating to at least £163,750 more than they would have paid under the previous regime.

Last month, estate agents Savills said the impact of the reforms has meant that prices in prime central London are now 4.6% lower year on year, while Knight Frank has also slashed its prime central London growth forecast.

Knight Frank said it had revised down its growth expectations for 2016 from 4.5% to 2%, saying that the top end of the London market had "faced a number of headwinds in 2015, which reduced annual price growth from 5% at the end of last year to 1.3% in September".

The estate agent also said that sales of properties priced over £3.3m have fallen by 25% this year.