Help - House Prices since 2002

[frogetyfrog]

Not sure if this is the most appropriate place to put this. Does anybody know what the average house price increase is from 2002 to now. Mainly interested in East Anglia but national would do. I have tried to google it but cant seem to find anything relevant. Really need to know this so any help much appreciated.

The Land Registry website has a House Price Index tool that allows you to put in your postcode for a single location (or multiple locations) an find out the average price of different types of houses in your area.

The tool can be accessed by clicking 'House Prices' in the top left green box on the screen I linked to then click 'Search Index' in teh orange box in the centre of the screen , then click the 'Single Location' button and press next.

Then enter your postcode or select a county or town and press next. The pages after that allow you to choose different types of report, house types and date ranges.

I did a test using Cambridgeshire for September 2002 compared to August 2009.

The average price for all types of houses was £130,369 (Sep 2002) versus £166,863 for (Aug 2009).

That is a rise of 28%.

The Land Registry figures are based on actual transactions rather than estate agent asking prices so are a reflectve of what is really happening in the market not just unrealistic owners demands. The Land Registry price indices have typically lagged and are lower than the indices based on asking prices (Rightmove) or mortgage advances (HBOS/Nationwide).

I use the Land Registry fggures to work out how much a house should really sell for. I take the price any gven house was last sold at and then apply the percentage increase/decrease for that area and type of house from the Land Registry.

The price a house last sold at can be got from Rightmove and various other websites.

Abatdead - thankyou so much for that. I have just done it and the figure is around 30%. Am I therefore right in thinking that if we multiply the figure we bought at in 2002 by 1.33, we should get what it would be reasonable to expect today as an average (I know that different houses will be more or less that figure but if we are around the ball park of it then I would be happy). We need reassurance that our house hasnt been a really dud investment as it doesnt appear to have increased much compared to some of our friends.

If it is 30% you should multiply by 1.3. If it was 40% you should multiply by 1.4 and so on.

Do remember that house prices have fallen back quite a lot from the 2007 peak and also do remember that in comparison with the FTSE 100 index whch has gone from 4051 on 25 October 2002 to 5242 yesterday's close that is also up 30%. However it is only up that much after a very strong rally since March of this year. Amazingly, the FTSE 100 is the sam elevel today as it was 10 years ago. A house has been a much better investment over a ten year horizon than the stock market.

Therefore house prices have not done badly or even done better (depending on your time horizon) compared to the main alternative investment that most people would normally consider and are a lot less volatile.

Lots of factors can affect prices of individual houses of course in particular locations and of course be careful when looking at asking prices your friends might have advertised their houses at. They may well have to accept a lot less in reality or not sell at all.