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House prices have declined by more than 10% since September, but Globrix finds that home counties and commuter-belt towns have been only lightly touched by the housing market slump
Cheltenham, the genteel town on the edge of the Cotswolds, has emerged almost unscathed from the housing crash over the past six months, with average property prices down by just 0.2% since last autumn, according to a new survey which identifies the most resilient spots in *Britain's crisis-hit market.
The asking price for the average house in Cheltenham was £220,498 in September 2008, and is still £219,999 today, according to property search-engine Globrix.
House prices have now been declining for more than a year on most measures, and the Council of Mortgage Lenders estimates that with nationwide prices down more than 20% from their peak, 900,000 people are now in negative equity, with many more expected to follow in the months ahead.
Across the country as a whole, prices have declined by more than 10% since the September, when the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused a worldwide collapse in consumer confidence. But Globrix finds that like Cheltenham, home counties and commuter-belt towns have been only lightly touched by the turmoil, with Farnborough, Slough and Sevenoaks in the five most resilient areas.
In the North, Burnley, Preston and Skegness stand out for having experienced less than a 5% drop in prices since September.
However, Globrix chief executive Daniel Lee admits that because the survey tracks asking prices, and not completed sales, the residents of Cheltenham, Slough and the other "resilient" areas could just be stubbornly refusing to accept reality: "It could simply be that sellers are refusing to drop their prices, which may mean the local property market is effectively *stagnating," he said.
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