Cash investors fuel property price boom
New records have been set in UK house prices, Rightmove reported today.

 The average asking price of a property new on the market has tipped £250,000 for the first time.
According to Rightmove, new sellers have bumped up their asking prices by 2.1% over the last month, The highest asking price previously was last June when it hit £246,235, and before that in May 2008 when it reached £242,500.

The fifth consecutive monthly rise means that overall, national average asking prices are now 5.1% higher than at the start of the year.

 Rightmove said this was the “strongest price start†to a year since 2004.

The site itself has also seen record traffic, with 1.25 billion pages viewed in April, a 20% rise on last year. However, buyers have less stock to look at, with new instructions this year down 3%.
The turn-around appears to be almost totally south-based and fuelled by cash property investors who are buying buy to let property. They have plenty of cash and little need of mortgages.
“Despite a new national record, it’s not ‘green shoots of recovery’ across the board, especially for the deposit-strapped mass-market. They must wait patiently until January when the Help to Buy scheme extends to the resale market.â€â€¨â€¨ According to Rightmove, only two regions have asking prices which have slipped back on last year – Yorkshire & Humberside, and the East Midlands, where they are down 1.1% and 0.6% respectively.
In some regions, the South-West and North-West, asking prices are more or less static, having gone up by 0.1% and 0.6% respectively.
The average asking price on Rightmove at £249,841 compares with the far lower ‘sold’ prices being quoted by Halifax and Nationwide, currently £166,094 and £165,586 respectively.