THE number of people moving up the housing ladder has hit a three-year high as rising house prices boosted the amount of cash they had tied up in their original properties.
About 337,500 existing home owners with a mortgage moved house last year in the UK, marking a 3% increase on 2012 and the highest annual total since 2010, according to Lloyds Bank's home movers review.
Lloyds' report pointed to rising house prices as helping to increase existing home owners' equity levels and help free them up to climb onto another rung of the property ladder.
A recent report from Lloyds' sister bank Halifax found UK house prices rose 7.5% in 2013 to reach £173,467 on average and a similar rise is predicted for this year.
On average, existing home owners are now putting down a deposit of £76,398 on the property they are buying, which is a 6% increase on a year earlier and equates to around one third of the purchase price of the home they are moving into.
Marc Page, Lloyds Bank mortgages director, said: "As house prices have increased over the last 12 months, we're seeing more people look to take the next step on the housing ladder."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article