www.loans4homeowners.co.uk House prices in Northern Ireland rose by 14.6 per cent in the last three months, the latest housing monitor shows, contributing to annual inflation of 9.5 per cent in Britain.

But Nationwide warns that the overall yearly growth of 9.5 per cent is being fuelled principally by houses in Northern Ireland and the capital, with property values in the north of England increasing at half the rate of their southern counterparts.

The building society's chief economist Fionnuala Earley explained that the "northern and north-west regions and Wales saw the biggest slowdown in the annual rate of house price growth".

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