Halifax: UK house prices see highest growth since August 2014

The quarterly year-on-year house price growth was 9.6% in the three months to June 2015, its highest point since August 2014, Halifax has declared.

The Halifax House Price Index found that tight housing supply caused house prices to rise for the fourth month in a row.

"Supply remains very tight, with the stock of homes available for sale currently at record low levels. This shortage has been a key factor in maintaining house price growth at a robust pace so far in 2015," Halifax housing economist Martin Ellis commented.

"Economic growth, higher employment, increasing real earnings growth and very low mortgage rates are all supporting housing demand with signs of a recent modest pick up in demand."

In his emergency budget statement on 8 July, Chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce measurements that would increase housing supply after years of an increasingly tight market.

Quarterly growth was higher than at any point in 2015 as well, at 3.3%, and, according to the Bank of England, the rate of mortgages approved increased by 6% in the three months to May 2015.

The rise in growth reported by Halifax contradicts Nationwide's announcement on 2 July that house price growth had slowed down on an annual basis and that the prices fell between May and June.