UK house prices hit a new record high – can it last?

Despite the pandemic, UK house prices have hit a new high. John Stepek looks at what’s driving the surge in prices, and what it means for house prices in the longer run.

Country cottage for sale © Geography Photos/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesCountry cottage for sale © 
City dwellers are heading for the country
(Image credit: © Geography Photos/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

As you might have noticed, we’re still in the grip of a pandemic, and we’re nowhere near seeing the end of the resulting surge in unemployment and business disruption.

So of course, UK house prices have just hit a record high. That’s according to Halifax. Its latest house price index suggests that the average UK house price rose to a record high of £241,604 (important to get that £4 in there) in July, up 3.8% on the same month last year.

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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.