Average North East home costs £147,000

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have put the average price of homes in the North East at £147,000, theguardian.com reports.
The ONS figures, which were for January but only published this week, showed British property prices grew at a rate of 6.8 per cent year-on-year. As usual, though, there were huge disparities across Britain.
London and the South East remained the strongest markets, where annual growth were 13.3 and 7.1 per cent respectively. In the North East, however, growth stood at a much more modest 0.6 per cent. As such, the average North East property could today be expected to fetch around £147,000.
Looking ahead, many analysts have expected house price growth to continue well into spring, as buyers continue to take advantage of the government's Help to Buy scheme, which enables them to get on the property ladder with a five per cent mortgage.
Among them was senior economics consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, William Zimmern, although he stopped short of saying these increases could form a potentially dangerous bubble.
"Our research indicates there seems to be little evidence to suggest a house price bubble at UK level," he told expressandstar.com. "In Northern Ireland for instance, house prices have only just turned a corner having bottomed out in 2013 and have now risen for nine consecutive months."