THE average price of a house in Northern Ireland at the end of 2021 is 12 per cent higher than this time last year, new figures from Nationwide suggest.
The building society’s latest house price index put the average home in the north at £167,479 for the final quarter of the year, 12.1 per cent, or £18,096 above the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2020.
The Nationwide index is one of a number of similar reports which track house prices in the north throughout the year.
Different methodologies adopted by Ulster University and Halifax have produced different conclusions on the average price of a house here.
But all the indices generally agree that house prices in 2021 have undergone the biggest annual increase since the height of the 2007 housing boom.
The official measure, the Northern Ireland House Price Index, put the average residential property at £159,109 for the third quarter of 2021, 10.7 per cent higher than Q3 2020.
The official figure for the fourth quarter won’t be published until February 2022.
The pace of price growth in the housing market has largely been attributed to a post-lockdown surge in demand for home-ownership, against a backdrop of government incentives and a fall in the supply of available housing stock.
Nationwide’s latest index suggests the pace at which prices rose in the fourth quarter eased somewhat to 1.4 per cent. However, the 12.1 per cent annual change was higher than both England and Scotland.
Nationwide said growth in Northern Ireland remained “elevated” at the end of 2021, with “the strongest end to the year for the region since 2007”.
The building society said UK wide, house prices rose by nearly £24,000 to £254,822 during 2021, the biggest increase ever recorded in a single year in cash terms.
