Is the north-south divide getting wider?
Are property prices rising out of all proportion in the south? Jessie Hewitson discovers if heading north could be the way ahead for first time buyers… There are many supposed differences between the north and south – a liking for mushy peas (a northern stereotype), unfriendly people (a southern stereotype) and the weather (a northern bugbear, though we all know it’s pretty shoddy south of Brum, too). Another difference between the regions, and a very real one, is the price of property. The average house price in London now stands at £432,898, according to the latest house price and affordability index of the property website FindaProperty, while in the north east the figure is just a quarter of that – at £149,900. There has been a growing divide in property prices between the north of the country and the south for some time now: since the Land Registry started compiling its figures back in 1995, homes in the north have always been less pricey than their southern counterparts. In the
