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Bloomberg
An English spa town and two coastal areas saw the biggest house-price increases in the UK in 2017, outstripping gains in London’s hotspots.
Cheltenham in southwest England saw a 13 percent jump in prices in 2017, almost five times the national increase of 2.7 percent, Bank of Scotland Plc’s Halifax division said.
The average house in the town, famous for its annual horse-racing
festival, rose to $423,000. Bournemouth and Brighton, both on England’s south coast, saw the next highest gains, with prices rising more than 11 percent in each.
House-price growth has slowed this year, with London a particular weak spot, thanks to a sluggish economy and a squeeze on consumers in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union.
The situation isn’t expected to improve soon, with forecasts released last month by Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Nationwide Building Society predicting a broadly flat 2018. The top performer in the UK capital was the eastern borough of Newham, which had a 10 percent increase. Two of the three areas with the biggest declines were in Scotland: Perth and Paisley. In all, 13 towns ended the year with lower prices.