ECONOMY
Jan house price growth at 14.9%
Posted Tue, 07 Feb 2006
Nominal house price growth stood at 14.9 percent year-on-year in January, according to the Absa House Price Index released on Monday.
The figure of 14.9 percent was compared to a revised growth rate of 15.5 percent in December 2005. This brought the average price of a house in the middle segment of the market to about R752 300 in the first month of the year.
The Absa House Price Index is based on the total purchase price of houses in the 80 metres squared to 400 metres squared size category, valued at R2.2-million or less in 2004 including improvements, for which loan applications were approved by Absa.
The average real year-on-year growth in house prices was 18.1 percent in 2005, which is based on an average headline CPI inflation rate of 3.4 percent last year.
On a month-on-month basis, nominal growth in house prices came to one percent in January compared with a revised growth rate of 1.2 percent in December. Real month-on-month growth of
1.1 percent was recorded in December last year.
According to the index, based on the current mortgage interest rate of 10.5 percent and the average price of a house in January this year, the monthly mortgage repayment and the gross monthly income required in order to afford a 100 percent mortgage, were 11.2 percent higher in the past month compared with January 2005 when the rise was 26.8 percent.
Sapa
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