New home owners make hansom profit!

Did estate agents selling the newly built Stonebridge houses earlier this year get their sums wrong?

New home owners on Stonebridge Park may have made a quick profit of up to £50,000 by buying newly built houses at bargain prices. In the case of the four bedroom Victoria & 3 bedroom Carlton type houses in Dennett Close, the profit made could be much more than that?

House prices jumped a "surprising" 1.3% in August, the Nationwide building society has said in its annual report.

It was the biggest monthly rise since January 2010 and left the average UK house price at £164,729.

It means prices are only 0.7% lower than a year ago, despite the recession and continued mortgage rationing.

However, the society's chief economist, Robert Gardner, warned that "we should never read too much into one month's data".

"Nevertheless, the fact that the annual pace of house price decline moderated to minus 0.7% in August from minus 2.6% the previous month provides evidence that conditions remain fairly stable.

"This may be explained by the surprising resilience evident in the UK labour market, with further increases in employment in recent months, even though the UK economy has remained in recession," he added.