The Halifax is the latest of many house price indices to show higher than expected house price growth - and yet again it’s a shortage of stock that is prompting the rise.
Its latest quarterly index, just released, shows that prices from June to August increased three per cent, taking the annual hike to nine per cent.
The rise within August alone was particularly large - 2.7 per cent - but the Halifax cautions that individual months can produce volatile results and that the quarterly movement is a more reliable measure.
An interesting by-product of the data is an analysis of buying versus renting.
The average monthly costs associated with buying a three bedroom house in the UK for a first-time buyer was £666 in June 2015 - that is eight per cent (or £56) lower than the typical monthly rent paid on the same property type (£722).
With the price of a typical first-time buyer home rising by eight per cent over the past year, the difference between the cost of owning and the cost of renting has narrowed from £85 in to £56 over the past year.
Earlier this week the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors boosted its prediction for annual house price rises by the end of 2015 from three per cent to six.
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