What will Brexit do to house prices?

Prior to the Brexit vote, the Treasury warned that house prices would be 10% to 18% lower. Will it be proved right? John Stepek investigates.

16-6-30-Leave-1200

What will happen to house prices now that Britain has voted to leave?

What impact will Brexit have on the housing market? Prior to the vote, the Treasury warned that prices would be 10% to 18% lower than they would otherwise have been by 2017/2018. Was George Osborne right to be so pessimistic? At first sight, it may seem so. Estate agency Foxtons set the tone early, warning this week that its full-year profits would be "significantly lower" than last year, following the Brexit vote. "The upturn in the second half of this year is now unlikely to materialise." The company saw its share price fall by more than a fifth on Monday as a result.

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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.