House prices are booming like never before in York, contradicting reports of a national slump.

Estate agents are dismissing quarterly figures published by the Land Registry today suggesting a slight slowdown in average price increases in most areas.

Only Selby is left out of the boom, some say, and the only fly in the ointment is that greed may be fuelling unrealistic expectations in the minds of some sellers.

The survey suggests that in Yorkshire and the Humber region, the average home showed a seven per cent increase at £66,324, lower than the average increase of 7.6 per cent for England and Wales.

But, say the estate agents, if you remove areas like Selby, Hull or Bradford from the regional equation, the boom would keep pace with the likes of the West Midlands, where prices are up by 11.2 per cent.

And in any case, they say, the Land Registry survey, based on completions and signatures on contracts, tends to be accurate, but three months out of date. The Land Registry survey also contrasts with the findings of another quarterly survey published today by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. It records another sharp rise in residential property prices across Yorkshire and the East Riding in the three months to April, with 74 per cent more surveyors reporting a rise than a fall, and of them, 30 per cent reporting increases of anything up to 25 per cent.

Edward Waterson, residential sales partner in the York office of Carter Jonas, said: "Regionally the market has never been stronger. That is right across the board. The problem is that Yorkshire and the Humber figures include Selby, and the likes of Hull, where values are probably half what they were ten years ago.

"The fact is that we saw stronger growth in North Yorkshire in the first part of this year than we have seen since 1988."

But he, like other estate agents in the region, believes that prices will level out by later this summer.

York estate agent Peter Moody, partner at Hudson Moody, cautioned against an "element of greed" creeping into the housing market in parts of North Yorkshire where property prices are particularly buoyant.

Mr Moody said: "The market has risen very well in places like York, and is still rising, albeit more slowly than at the beginning of this year.

"But the alarm bells are ringing because the greed element is creeping in.

"It is no longer a case of hoping to achieve a fantastic figure for your property. Now vendors are expecting to get a silly price."

But even though some mortgage lenders were "throwing money at house buyers", many purchasers were now pausing to consider how affordable repayments would be in the future.

It was one of the reasons for his prediction that the property prices boom in North Yorkshire would slow down over the next few months, then level off.

"But it won't be a crash. It will be gentle," he said.

Kevin Hollinrake, director of Hunters, which has seven branches, four of them in the York area, said that because of the way the Land Registry calculated the figures they reflected the market as it was in September or October last year.

"The market has been hugely buoyant in the first five months of this year and April was particularly busy," he said.

Updated: 15:34 Wednesday, May 30, 2001