Big city round-up - where's hot and where's not

The Midlands and Northern England dominated the city-by-city house price charts in 2022 according to newly released numbers from Zoopla, who also offer their thoughts on how the early weeks of 2023 are shaping up.

House price increases stalled in the final quarter of 2022 with most regions seeing small price falls. The interest rate shock in September resulted in a 50% drop in demand according to Zoopla, which they expect to feed through to a continued slowdown in annual house price growth in the coming months.

The highest performing cities

.

Average
price

December 2022
y-o-y

December 2021
y-o-y

Nottingham

£201,800

+9.1%

+10.0%

Manchester

£220,000

+8.1%

+9.5%

Birmingham

£206,300

+8.1%

+8.0%

Leicester

£227,000

+8.1%

+8.7%

Liverpool

£156,000

+7.6%

+11.1%

20 Cities Index

£296,600

+5.5%

+6.4%

With affordability increasingly becoming an issue, it is unsurprising to see the UK's three most expensive cities towards the foot of Zoopla's table. London saw gains averaging 3.4%, Oxford 3.3% and Cambridge 4.6%.

Buyer preferences moving towards flats

According to Zoopla's report, higher mortgage rates are causing a 'clear shift in demand' away from houses towards flats. 27% of new buyers are looking for 1 and 2 bedroom flats compared to 22% a year ago, with a corresponding decrease in demand for 3 bedroom houses. In London, the demand for flats now represents 49% of the total.

The coming months

The report notes that demand has bounced back to the pre-pandemic average and is 10% higher than in 2019. However, these are early weeks and it remains to be seen now much of this stems from pent-up demand from a slow last quarter.

Supply, too is increasing, but remains 6% below the 5 year average. However, buyers are likely to be cautious, waiting to see whether prices will fall further and at what level interest rates will settle. These factors lead Zoopla to believe that the first half of 2023 is likely to be slow, with prices falling by a low single figure percentage.