Derry and Strabane house prices climb

That represents an increase of just over 6% since the same time last year.

Land & Property Services assisted by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency today released the House Price Index report for Quarter 1 2021. The Index measures change in the price of residential property sold in Northern Ireland (NI). The Index uses Stamp Duty information on residential property sales recorded by HMRC. The NI House Price Index series is used as the NI component of the single official UK HPI and the statistics are comparable with other UK regions.

The UK Government lockdown measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 essentially paused the housing market between 23 March and 15 June. The number of transactions recorded in April – June 2020 was approximately one third of the initial number of sales recorded during April – June 2019.

Although there was a large reduction in the number of sales during the quarter, the sales received were still representative of the property market as they were not skewed towards one property type, location or socio-demographic characteristic.

LPS/NISRA are content the model used to predict the average price and index value is robust and the reduced number of sales did not adversely affect the quality of the price index calculations for the second quarter of 2020.

The NI House Price Index was awarded National Statistics status on 18 September 2018.

Results for the most recent quarter (January - March 2021), which are provisional, show that:

Between Q4 (October - December) 2020 and Q1 (January - March) 2021 the house price index increased by 1.1%;

Between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021 the house price index increased by 6.0%;

The average price for a house in Northern Ireland is £149,178 and ranges from £128,320 in Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon to £175,813 in Lisburn and Castlereagh.

6,732 residential properties sold during Q1 2021;

(This number will be revised upwards in the next publication due to late returns and the entry of new properties into the NI Valuation List)

The House Price Index is now 34.5% higher than Q1 2015 (the reference period).

Local Government District Index and Prices

The report includes trends in the property markets in each council area across NI.

The Index value for Q1 2021 for NI as a whole is 134.5 and ranges from 128.6 in Ards and North Down to 147.2 in Causeway Coast and Glens.

In Derry City and Strabane the index is 141.6, which represents a Quarterly Change of 3.4% and an Annual Change of 6.2%.