The Brexit effect on house prices

published 12 May 2016

When David Cameron agreed to a referendum on EU membership, I suspect he thought it would be an easy win. He clearly doesn't now. The prime minister has rolled out every big hitter he can find to back his claim that British and global security will be at risk if we vote leave. But George Osborne has gone a step further straight for the thing the British care most about: house prices.

The chancellor reckons there will be a "significant hit to the value of people's homes and to the cost of mortgages" if we vote out. He may be right. But he may be wrong if Brexit is the disaster he says he expects, surely interest rates are more likely to fall than rise? If Brexit causes an EU collapse and security meltdown, might there not be a flood of French house buyers into the safe haven that is, and presumably still will be, London? House prices could go up, not down.

And Osborne might be on dodgy ground appealing to people to vote to keep house prices high. It's worked for years. The UK has long been a nation of homeowners what would be more natural than for those homeowners to want the price of their major asset to rise and rise? But times have changed. The percentage of households that own a home is falling (it is at its lowest for 29 years). The percentage of renters is rising. And, as prices have risen far beyond salaries, the average age of the first-time buyer has shot up: ten years ago 59% of the 25-to-34 age group were owner occupiers. Now it's 36%.

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The result? Parents and grandparents have begun to fear that their young will never have the security of owning their own home. And they are trying to find ways to help out. That means the return of the 100% mortgage guaranteed by a parent. And the rise of the Bank of Mum and Dad (forecast by Legal & General to be involved in 25% of all mortgage transactions this year) and the introduction of new age limits: Nationwide is now to let borrowers keep their loans until they are 85.

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Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast - but still writes for Moneyweek monthly.

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.