The Hometrack April survey of the housing market reports a 0.7% increase in house prices across the country, following last month’s rise (also 0.7%) and February’s 0.9% rise.

This year’s monthly rises continue to remain significantly above typical month changes recorded last year and confirm a buoyant start to the year. With demand still outstripping supply, the housing market remains on an upward curve.

The overall average price of a house has now increased to £150,800 (last month £149,800), breaking the £150,000 barrier for the first time. The average house price is now over five times the typical household income.

Once again, price rises were spread across the country with Cumbria performing particularly well (1.7%). Cumbria has been consistently in the top five performing counties for the last three months. Beauty spots are supporting property hot spots in this popular holiday county.

Other regions that saw the highest recorded increases were Mid Wales (1.1%), Norfolk (1.1%) and Cambridgeshire, Lancashire, Northumberland and Teesside (all 1.0%). No regions recorded falling values.

All the country’s major cities saw rising prices this month. Canterbury and Carlisle saw the highest monthly rises, both showing increases of 1.5%. Bradford and Norwich both recorded increases of 1.4% while Lancaster and Swansea showed price rises of 1.3%.

Hometrack’s unique national demand index shows that both the number of properties for sale and the number of buyers registered have risen this month. The number of new buyers registered (4.6%) continues to outstrip the number of properties listed (3.6%) indicating that demand continues to outweigh supply.

This excess demand supports the argument that house prices are going to continue to rise in the coming months. Sales agreed grew by 7%, another major increase following a 10% rise last month. Despite seasonality explaining some of the increase, levels of transactions are rising much more than at this time last year (5% in April 2003).

Average sales price achieved as a percentage of asking price continued to rise to 96.4%. This is over 2% up from the low of 94.2% recorded in last year’s June survey. This is the highest percentage recorded since November 2002, and again provides evidence that demand is strengthening in relation to supply.

The average length of time taken to sell a property has fallen to 4.2 weeks (4.3 weeks in March’s survey). There is currently an average of 10.2 viewings before a sale is achieved.

John Wriglesworth, Hometrack’s Housing Economist, comments: “House prices continue to rise strongly with no signs of a slowdown. Demand continues to outpace supply, sellers are getting ever closer to their asking prices and transactions are rising strongly. Meanwhile, mortgage lenders are bending over backwards offering exceptionally attractive mortgage deals at historically low interest rates.”

“Prospective house buyers are also increasingly able to borrow higher multiples of their income to allow them to afford their desired home.”

“The only economic factors that could seriously hinder future rises in house prices over the next year are a doubling of either interest rates, stamp duty or unemployment. No economist in the world is expecting any of these for the UK, even those at the IMF! We continue to confidently forecast house price inflation of 8% for this year.”