V-shaped bounce in UK housing

Those searching for a V-shaped recovery need look no further than the UK housing market, says Thomas Pugh of Capital Economics. Nationwide’s House Price Index shows that house prices rose 5% in the year to September, the biggest gain in four years. The Bank of England reports that mortgage approvals in August hit 85,000, the highest level since 2007.

Covid-19 has made many rethink their living arrangements, says Jessica Beard in The Daily Telegraph. A Nationwide survey reports that “one in ten movers” are motivated by the pandemic. “A further 18% are considering moving for the same reason”.

That has driven a big boom in the London commuter belt, says Hanna Ziady for CNN Business. Data from Rightmove shows that the number of transactions in 16 English villages, mostly located an hour or two away from London, has already surpassed the total for the whole of last year. The boom has been especially concentrated at the top end of the market, with the number of sales of properties worth more than £1m doubling year-on-year in the first half of August.

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Analysts expect the housing market to hit turbulence next year as unemployment rises and the chancellor’s stamp-duty holiday ends. Online visits to the main property websites started to trend down in September, says Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics. That’s an early sign that the boom is “coming off the boil”.

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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.