UK House Price Index: May 2017

This is a high-level summary of the UK House Price Index (HPI). For full details, including commentary, historical data tables and analytical tools please see the main publication of the House Price Index, published today (18 July 2017) by HM Land Registry on the GOV.UK website.

On 15 June 2017, the National Statistician announced that pre-release access to ONS statistics will stop with effect from 1 July 2017.

The UK HPI is a joint production by HM Land Registry, Land and Property Services Northern Ireland, Office for National Statistics and Registers of Scotland. These departments will continue to work together to produce the release but ministers and those officials not directly involved in the production and release of statistics will not have access to them in advance of publication.

The UK HPI, introduced in June 2016, includes all residential properties purchased for market value in the UK. However, as sales only appear in the UK HPI once the purchases have been registered, there can be a delay before transactions feed into the index. As such, caution is advised when interpreting prices changes in the most recent periods as they are liable to be revised. Since 13 June 2017, we have extended our revision period to 12 months. Further information is provided in our revision policy.

The UK HPI has been published initially as an experimental official statistic to:

• allow for users to acclimatise to the format of the new HPI
• evaluate user reaction to the new data
• continue evolution of data publication to meet user requirements
• further develop the data sources used in the production

Further information on the process we’re following to remove the Experimental Statistics status can be found in About the UK House Price Index.

Average house prices in the UK have increased by 4.7% in the year to May 2017 (down from 5.3% in the year to April 2017). The annual growth rate has slowed since mid-2016 but has remained broadly around 5% during 2017.

The average UK house price was £221,000 in May 2017. This is £10,000 higher than in May 2016 and £1,000 higher than last month.

The main contribution to the increase in UK house prices came from England, where house prices increased by 5.0% over the year to May 2017, with the average price in England now £238,000. Wales saw house prices increase by 3.8% over the last 12 months to stand at £150,000. In Scotland, the average price increased by 3.5% over the year to stand at £143,000. The average price in Northern Ireland currently stands at £124,000, an increase of 4.3% over the year to Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2017.

On a regional basis, London continues to be the region with the highest average house price at £481,000, followed by the South East and the East of England, which stand at £316,000 and £284,000 respectively. The lowest average price continues to be in the North East at £127,000.

The East of England showed the highest annual growth, with prices increasing by 7.5% in the year to May 2017. This was followed by the East Midlands at 7.2%. The lowest annual growth was in the North East, where prices increased by 1.6% over the year, followed by London at 3.0%.

The local authority showing the largest annual growth in the year to May 2017 was the Orkney Islands, where prices increased by 25.2% to stand at £149,000. Low numbers of sales transactions in some local authorities, such as the Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and Na h-Eileanan Siar can lead to volatility in the series. Whilst efforts are made to account for this volatility, the change in price in these local levels can be influenced by the type and number of properties sold in any given period. The lowest annual growth was recorded in Na h-Eileanan Siar, where prices fell by 18.0% to stand at £92,000.

In May 2017, the most expensive borough to live in was Kensington and Chelsea, where the cost of an average house was £1.5 million. In contrast, the cheapest area to purchase a property was Burnley, where an average house cost £78,000.

Full details on data at the local authority level can be found in the main publication of the House Price Index.

Details of the methodology used to calculate the UK House Price Index (HPI) can be found in the article Development of a single Official House Price Index.

Further information on how the new UK HPI compares with the previous Office for National Statistics and HM Land Registry House Price Indices can be found in the article Explaining the impact of the new UK House Price Index.

The UK House Price Index (HPI) Quality and Methodology Information document contains important information on:

• the strengths and limitations of the data and how it compares with related data
• uses and users of the data
• how the output was created
• the quality of the output including the accuracy of the data