House prices and Covid-19

The housing market is in deep freeze – what happens when it thaws out?

Winter for the UK housing market © Getty
(Image credit: Blackrock Cottage, Glencoe © Gregor Roach/Getty Images)

Most of the non-essential parts of the British economy have been put on hold by the coronavirus lockdown and the housing market – core as it may seem to many of our lives – is no exception. With moving during the lockdown period being heavily discouraged by the government (see below) and many lenders now refusing to lend to those with anything less than a 40% deposit, property website Zoopla reckons that the number of houses sold in the UK will fall by at least 60% in the next three months.

There are several factors behind the move – the shutdown has reduced banks’ capacity to process loans, surveyors are unable to value properties as easily and estate agents can’t show people around homes. On top of that, it’s hard to value a house when transactions have dried up and there are no comparable deals going through, and it’s hard to write loans when job security across almost all industries and seniority levels is suddenly in question.

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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.