Oxford the only English city to see house prices fall since 2018

The average house price in Oxford fell by 0.4 per cent in the year to August and is now £409,100, according to the Zoopla UK Cities House Price Index.

What's more, ordinary families and working people are more likely to benefit from the drop, as property investors are put off buying by recent changes to stamp duty, the report suggests.

Despite the fall, however, Oxford is still the third most expensive place to buy a house in the UK, behind Cambridge and London, and still unaffordable to many.

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In Cambridge, the average house price is £429,500, while in London it is £483,800.

Oxford estate agent Keith Stacey, managing director at Breckon and Breckon, agreed with the Zoopla report that stamp duty changes made by government in 2016 had deterred cash buyers who pay upfront for properties.

These buyers are often investors and property developers who have to pay extra tax if they own multiple properties.

Mortgaged buyer numbers, meanwhile, have remained resilient, the Zoopla report says.

Mr Stacey said: “I think that people who are buying houses at the moment are the people that need to buy houses – people who want to move here for work or those who need a bigger house because of their family.

“People who have got a solid need to buy are still buying.”

Keith Stacey, MD of sales at Breckon and Breckon.

He cautioned that the fall in house prices in Oxford had to be considered in real terms, and that a 0.4 per cent drop was the equivalent of £1,600 off the average selling price of a house in Oxford.

But he said estate agents had been working harder to sell houses in the last year.

He said: "It is harder work – it’s a relatively stable market but I think prices have dropped a little bit, though not a great deal."

He added: "They have probably dropped more at the upper end of the market more than the lower end of the market."

Here's what Zoopla said about house prices in Oxford in their report for July

Mr Stacey also said he was not convinced that only Oxford was benefitting from the trend.

He said: “I find it staggering to hear that we are the only city where there has been a fall in house prices in the last year.

“We compare our pipeline on a year-on-year basis and we have been pretty much mirroring 2018 throughout 2019.”

Oxford is the third most expensive place to live in the UK after London and Cambridge.

The average salary for Oxford is £33,900, which means a mortgage in the city is out of reach for many of its residents.

Most mortgage providers will lend four times a salary, which means someone the average wage could borrow £135,600.

Even with a 10 per cent deposit, the maximum spend is £149,160.

While there are flats for sale at under £100,000 in Oxford, the lowest listed house price for the city on the Zoopla website is currently £178,250 on Leiden Road in Headington, and this is a reduced price for over-60s.

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Richard Donnell, research and insight director at Zoopla, said the housing market was currently giving off mixed signals.

He said: “This is at a time when Brexit is dominating the headlines again and further complicating the outlook.

“Despite increased uncertainty, demand from mortgaged homeowners appears resilient, with demand supported by low mortgage rates, high levels of employment, and households who want a home.”

In early September, a study by Post Office Money found Oxford to have no homes which are typically affordable for people taking their first steps on the property ladder.

Homes were deemed affordable if they cost less than four and a half times typical local first-time buyer incomes, according to the report, which used Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.