How to tell if you're spending too much on property

House prices are at record highs - but with global interest rates rising, the gains seem unlikely to continue. So how can you protect yourself from a house price crash if you're planning to buy now?

House prices are continuing to pick up but is the mini-revival already wearing thin as summer approaches?

According to property website Hometrack, house prices rose by 0.6% in April. Gains were driven mainly once again by growth in London prices. But growth elsewhere in the country has been limited. Hometrack's Richard Donnell said affordability pressures mean the group expects 'levels of market activity and growth to slow in the run up to the summer and the World Cup.'

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.