The UK house price bubble hisses air

The fall in house prices has much further to go, says Merryn Somerset Webb

Illustration of downward arrow bisecting a house
(Image credit: © Getty images)

If you want to thank your lucky stars for something, make it that you did not think 2021 was the perfect time to buy a house in Sweden.

It might have been tempting – given that Sweden probably produced the best response to Covid in the developed world and regularly tops the global happiness ratings. But it would have hit your pocket pretty hard too: house prices are down 17% from their peak last January.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.