Market Reports

March was a month of small but significant announcements. The Budget failed to deliver anything spectacular property wise but there were two points that may help home movers. The first is the continuation of the Energy Price Guarantee across Great Britain and the £2,500 threshold remains until July.

With 2023 well underway, a pattern is emerging for this year’s property market. While house price reductions may sound alarming, they’re minimal and against a backdrop of unusually high appreciation.

January serves a lesson in how to interpret the house price data that is released to the media. As the month drew to a close, two different house price indexes caught our eye. They told slightly different stories for the same month.

November brought stability to the property market, with nothing outrageous to report. In fact, positive news began filtering through, starting with mortgage rates. Financial advisers saw rates peak in October and, in some cases, begin to fall in November. 

You may have seen October’s headline that property prices had fallen for the first time in 15 months. Should this come as a shock? No, as the frequency and rate at which house prices rose during late 2020 and 2021 was unsustainable

It may read like ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ but there’s plenty of positive property news this month. If approached with calm caution, highlights can be extracted. You just need to know where to look.

What does it take to stop the UK’s apparently unassailable property market? Another interest rate rise? An energy crisis? Rising food bills? For now, apparently none of these factors is denting the determination to move home.  

Here we discuss house prices, rental values and major changes to lettings. There’s also a new UK average house price and a new Bank of England base rate. If you want to know how any of the points affect your property plans, please get in touch.