London Home Prices Have Biggest New-Year Surge in Five Years

London home sellers flooded the market in January and pushed up asking prices in the biggest new-year increase since 2008, Rightmove Plc said.

Asking prices in the capital rose 3.6 percent from the previous month to an average 480,890 pounds ($764,000), the property website operator said in a report today. Prices rose 9.7 percent from a year earlier, the biggest annual increase since February 2010. Nationally, prices rose 0.2 percent.