House prices are rising across the globe, not just in the UK

Despite everything, UK house prices are still rising. It’s tempting to think this is a uniquely British phenomenon, but it’s a global trend. John Stepek explains what's going on.

Home for sale in California © Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Property prices are rising all over the world
(Image credit: © Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

House prices in the UK are still rising, despite Covid-19, despite lockdown-induced rampant economic uncertainty, and despite the fact that they were hardly cheap in the first place.

How can this be? Why so resilient? Or, to put it another way: if you’re a frustrated would-be buyer, what’s wrong with our housing market that it can remain oblivious to the worst recession ever?

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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.