Leading economic forecaster, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), revealed that it speculates house prices to climb by more than 6% during 2010 and be around 20% higher by the end of 2013.

Also, it expects house prices to rise by over 6% this year. This outlines a significant increase on its earlier forecast where it augured that prices would increase between 2% and 4% over the year.

Its earlier predictions of rising mortgage lending, a shortage of new properties on the market and unemployment not rising as fast as expected, has fuelled the rise.

Benjamin Williamson of the CEBR comments: "However, with the rate of mortgage lending more than doubling over this period of time, a shortage of new properties on the market, low interest rates and unemployment not rising nearly as fast as expected, it is easy to see how prices have moved so quickly."

While the group speculates a 20% rise in prices by the end of 2013, in addition, it predicts the house price growth to falter during 2011 on account to public sector cutbacks and increases in unemployment take their toll.

The group reported that the rise was propelled by activity in London and the south while prices in the rest of the country remained stagnated.

In contrast, last week the Nationwide registered a 1.2% jump for the month of January compared with December.

January's gain takes the annual increase to 8.6% - the highest since October 2007, reported Nationwide,