Rural property values outperforming urban

Rural house prices have slightly outperformed those in urban areas since 2007, according to latest research from Halifax.

In the past five years, the average price of a countryside home has fallen by 20% compared to 22% in urban areas.

Over the past year, the value of the average country home has risen 2% compared with 1% for an urban dwelling, and at £201,191 the typical rural property is now worth 17% more than its urban equivalent (£171,709).

But rising property values have made rural housing less accessible – in 2012 only one in 17 (five in total) rural Local Authority Districts were deemed affordable, that is to say has a house price to earnings ratio of four or less.

The least affordable area is Tandridge in Surrey, where the price of a house is 8.4 times greater than the local average annual income, with Cotswold (8.1) coming in a close second.

At £427,647, the highest average property price in rural Britain is found in Chiltern; over four times higher than the lowest – East Ayrshire with an average price of £100,119.

Halifax housing economist, Martin Ellis, comments: “The traditional British country pile has become less affordable, and it is proving more and more difficult to find fruitful results when foraging for houses in the country.”