Online House Hunter: Northern frights | Alan Cleaver | Independent Property Blogs

Online House Hunter: Northern frights | Alan Cleaver | Independent Property Blogs

THOSE in the property business and those just interested in buying or selling a home have always taken an interest in the north-south divide. In many ways it’s an arbitrary division – why not look at the east-west divide instead? – but there’s an instinctive feel that it either tells us something about the property market or about society in general.

Rightmove sounded an alarm bell this month when they issued their house price index and flagged up the “widest ever price gulf between the north and south”. The definition of “ever” would seem to be January 2007 when their graph starts. Rightmove declares itself the UK’s largest property website advertising around 90 per cent of all homes for sale so it’s worth taking note of what they say. But note, the figures are based on the asking price for homes not the price they actually sold for.