How do you you get a clear picture of what is happening to property prices in the Uk? Yes you can listen to the radio or read countless newspaper reports and view the perceived downfall of the entire property market on television. But is the news that we are receiving by various media outlets a true reflection of what is happening in your local area ?
As a generalisation no one can deny that we have seen the average prices of property decrease over the past year by varying degrees in all regions of the UK. To get that average national rate of growth or decline in the UK you must add together the regional property data related to prices and sales then do a simple divison. The result of this is that everyone is painted with the same statistic even though there may be huge regional variations.
We must remember each region is made up of counties and each county is made up of different smaller local authorites. Each of these different sized areas will have differing results. So you may be living in a county that may be showing a drop in average property prices of say 5% in the past year however, your particular area in that county may have suffered no decline in prices. Getting this news out into the general media is difficult.
The land registry for England and Wales records all properties that have been sold . One can assume it is a trusted source of information. The statistics for Kent recently published on the BBC listed below makes interesting reading . They are the most recently published and relate to the last quarter up until the end of June. Whilst national papers were showing declines in the property market for the South East in reality the picture was very different. Tonbridge and Malling actually saw an increase over the previous quarter and an overall increase in the year. Even if one attached the latest gloomy drop in national prices to this area it shows that prices have dropped no where near to this or may even have seen a rise in prices.
So if you want to study property prices in the UK don’t just rely on large brush stroke statistics. My advise is to look for the detailed painting by numbers view of the market.
Select figures for:

| ALL PROPERTIES - SORT BY: |
| NAME |
AV PRICE (£) |
QUARTER |
ANNUAL |
SALES |
|
|
£354,797 |
-11.6% |
2.7% |
315 |
|
|
£314,917 |
1% |
6.3% |
432 |
|
|
£285,425 |
4.6% |
4.5% |
415 |
|
|
£249,884 |
7.3% |
3.9% |
410 |
|
|
£230,404 |
2% |
4.7% |
538 |
|
|
£229,065 |
-1.4% |
-3.1% |
587 |
|
|
£214,347 |
4.6% |
6.3% |
325 |
|
|
£212,952 |
-3.8% |
1.4% |
383 |
|
|
£201,834 |
-6.4% |
2.6% |
306 |
|
|
£199,642 |
5.9% |
13.8% |
458 |
|
|
£188,348 |
-6.0% |
-0.7% |
344 |
|
|
£188,347 |
3.7% |
5.3% |
479 |
|
|
£179,020 |
2.8% |
4.4% |
928 |
Data obatained fromm BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/counties/html/county47.stm