Housing stock trebles in value to £3.4 trillion over a decade

Housing stock trebles in value to £3.4 trillion over a decade

The house price boom of the last decade has seen the total value of all private housing in Britain treble to £3.4 trillion - three times the UK's annual economic output, research from the Halifax shows today.

London has seven of the top 10 local authorities with the most valuable housing. Westminster tops the table with property worth £40bn - half the National Health Service's annual budget.

The capital's housing stock is worth nearly £600bn, more than all of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the north, which have a combined value of £520bn.

Tim Crawford, Halifax economist, said: "The UK housing market increased in value by nearly £200bn in 2005 and is now worth a record £3.4 trillion. This increase in the value of the housing stock highlights that household balance sheets are in good shape. Housing assets are worth three and a half times the value of housing debt and assets have increased by more than debt levels in each of the past 10 years."

The research showed Birmingham was second to Westminster, with housing worth £38.2bn, followed by Kensington & Chelsea and Barnet. The next five were Leeds, Wandsworth, Edinburgh, Bromley, Richmond upon Thames and Ealing.

The sharpest rises in property values over the last five years were in Eden, Cumbria, up 169%, and Easington in Co Durham, up 160%. Curiously, Easington also has the highest share of people on long-term sickness benefit in Britain......continued below

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Three of the top 10 were in the south-west: North Cornwall, Penwith and North Devon.

The north-south gap has narrowed over the past five years with 55% of total housing wealth in the south now compared with 60% five years ago. The north has seen the fastest housing wealth growth of any region over the last five years.

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