How much money have you made on your home since the last general election?
03-28-2015
House prices in London have jumped 40pc under the Tories-Lib Dem coalition - but not all UK homeowners have seen their property value rocket
How much money have you made on your home since the last general election?
House prices in London have jumped 40pc under the Tories-Lib Dem coalition - but not all UK homeowners have seen their property value rocket
David Cameron launches the Help to Buy Mortgage guarantee
The average house price in London has almost doubled since the last general election. Photo: PA
By Anna White, Property correspondent
House prices in Britain have risen by 11pc since the last general election, driven by runaway price growth in London, the South East and East Anglia.
Homeowners in central London have watched the value of their property jump 40pc under the leadership of the Conservative party, while values in Greater London rose 25.2pc and property prices in the South East have shot up 16.8pc since May 2010.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were left behind in the housing market recovery that followed the 2008 crash, with prices falling -1pc, -2.7pc and -6pc respectively, according to analysis by estate agent Hamptons.
"The current government has aimed much of its housing policy at stimulating demand, particularly the three Help to Buy schemes and funding for lending," said Johnny Morris, head of residential research at Hamptons International.
"One has to wonder whether prices in the much of the country beyond London and the South East would have grown at all without this stimulus. Particularly as Help to Buy has been used most in these areas."
Nonetheless, critics of the Conservative party would argue that a lack of infrastructure investment and support for local economies in the top half of the country, especially in those cities which have seen huge public sector job cuts, have stifled the housing market recovery in certain parts of the country.
LONDON
London house prices were 1.7 times that of the UK average when David Cameron came to power, the gap has now risen to 2.1 times.
FACT: The average London house price was £290,200 at the time of the last election - which will now buy a small 2-bed flat in Wembley.
International demand from investors, the families of overseas students studying in the South East, companies relocating offices and employees to the capital and wealthy domestic buyers have flocked to central London in the last five years, conspiring to create a global city rather than a UK capital.
In combination with a lack of housing supply this has accounted for the frenetic rise in property prices.
However Nationwide data, released this morning, has reaffirmed the recent trend that the London market is continuing to slow.
"London’s been knocked back down the quarterly growth rankings with five regions outperforming London in the last quarter. This is likely the start of a period where prices in the rest of the country, particularly in the South, start to catch up a little bit with London. Albeit it’s taking a while for the shifts in the market to feed through into prices," said Mr Morris.
"Typically in the housing market cycle London will be the first and fastest to recover after a downturn, but there is a limit to how far prices in London can exceed those in the areas surrounding it. Affordability pressures in the mid to low end market and uncertainty over the outcome of the election in the top end will continue to weigh on price growth in London."
THE UK
The annual growth rate of UK house prices slowed for seventh consecutive month, according to the latest data from Nationwide, with the average home in the UK costing £188,566.
London's annual growth rate dropped back from 17.8pc in the 12 months to Q4 2014 to 12.7pc to the end of Q1 2015. The quarterly growth rate nudged up just 0.1pc.
Industry experts have put this down to the end of a period of unsustainable growth, in combination with general election uncertainty.
The muted London market has also impacted the average UK growth rate.
The price of the average British home rose 8.3pc in the year to March 2014, but only 5.9pc in the 12 months to this March, after a quiet second half of 2014 put the brakes on the rapid house price appreciation to which homeowners had quickly become accustomed, with seven out of 12 UK regions recording steady growth.
The quarterly rate told a similar story as prices rose 0.6pc in the three months to March, the smallest quarterly increase since February 2013.
Householders in the North saw the biggest quarterly rise of 2.5pc, followed by the "outer Metropolitan" or Greater London.
House prices fell in the Scotland, Wales and the West Midlands over the three month period of January to March