UK house prices rose fastest in Plymouth this year as investment in shopping and amenities lured buyers to the south-west city, a survey of 2025 housing hotspots shows, as the central London market struggled with weaker demand.
The average property price rose by 12.6% in Plymouth during 2025, the steepest rise anywhere in the country, taking the typical home price to £278,808. The data, from Lloyds Banking Group, showed Stafford and Wigan also had double-digit growth.
Nigel Bishop, of the buying agency Recoco Property Search, said: “Plymouth has benefited from substantial infrastructural investments such Royal William Yard, which created a number of new homes. The city’s improved retail, sporting, culinary and general lifestyle amenities also position Plymouth as an attractive option for house hunters of all ages. This demand has contributed to a more competitive property market and property prices going up.”
Research from Confused.com found Plymouth ranked third on a list of the best cities for community. It was placed highest for overall life satisfaction, scoring 7.8 out of 10. It had the highest score when it came to happiness.
Hull entered the top 10 areas for house price growth for the first time, according to Lloyds’ data, with prices up 6.5%. The city was recently named a National Geographic “best of the world” destination for 2026.
Across the UK as a whole, average house prices rose by 3.7% year on year, Lloyds said, based on its mortgage lending data. Northern Ireland led regional growth at 5.8%, followed by Scotland and the north-west. London was the only region where prices stalled, with average values dipping by 0.1% to £574,514, still the most expensive in the UK.
Amanda Bryden, the head of mortgages at Lloyds, said the figures underlined how localised the housing market had become. “We’ve seen significant change in property values, with some areas rising sharply while others have cooled.”
Separate research from Savills shows that price falls at the top end of the market have slowed since the budget, as changes to the taxation of high-value homes proved “better than feared”.
In the final quarter of the year, values in prime central London fell by 0.9%, an improvement on the 1.8% decline of the previous quarter. In prime outer London neighbourhoods, which are more reliant on domestic buyers, prices dipped by just 0.2%, while prime regional markets fell by 0.6%, less than half the pace recorded in the summer.
Despite this, prices in London’s most traditional prime neighbourhoods have lost a quarter of their value since 2014.
Savills says recent measures – such as bringing global assets of long-term resident non-domiciles into UK inheritance tax and higher stamp duty surcharges on second homes – have dampened demand and put downward pressure on prices.
Frances McDonald, the director of research at Savills, said confidence among prime buyers had improved modestly since the budget, particularly in the £2m-plus market. “Agents, particularly in outer prime London neighbourhoods, are reporting a pickup in viewings and exchanges,” she said, though demand in the most expensive central postcodes remained thin.
She said: “Despite tax changes being ‘better than feared’, demand remains thin on the ground in more rarefied prime central London postcodes, with the pool of buyers already much shallower since the end of the non-dom regime.”
The non-dom regime allowed some UK residents to avoid tax on overseas income and was widely used by wealthy international buyers of high-end London property.
McDonald said: “Much of the budget’s impact on prices had effectively already been built in after rumours started circulating late summer. But it will take some time for the market to fully absorb the changes, with moderate falls expected to continue in the new year.”
Scotland was the strongest performing prime market in 2025, with prices holding steady overall and prime Edinburgh values rising 2.1% over the year, driven by constrained supply. Meanwhile, the country house market showed signs of bottoming out, with quarterly price falls easing sharply after a subdued year.