The UK housing market – on the cusp of seismic change?

One of our biggest achievements of 2022 has been bringing PriceHubble to the UK. 

To celebrate the launch, we held an exclusive event end of November attended by leading industry figures from the property, mortgage, and wider financial industry to share insights driven by speakers Jen Siebrits, Head of UK Research, CBRE; David Sturrock, Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies; and Sandra Jones, Managing Director, Dataloft. 

We talked about everything from the impact of former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on the housing market to the impact of the economic downturn. 

There is no doubt that we are in a very challenging environment and whilst there is a lot of noise around house prices, our speakers did not all agree that they would fall. 

In spite of this there has still been a steady decline in the number of younger people getting on the property ladder, with a clear dependence on parental assistance when buying a first home. 

We also discussed developments in the rental market. Even though UK landlords will be hit by interest rate rises, new money is coming into residential property via new landlords and existing landlords are also building bigger portfolios. Our speakers also highlighted that landlords may be looking to short term lets such as holiday cottages to recoup the income they would have lost during the pandemic.

One thing that we agreed on was that the phrase “An Englishman’s home is his castle” almost continues to ring true but in the current economic landscape, now more than ever there is a need to address and unpick the time bomb of allocating and managing assets. There is currently a clear lack of data on how the home sits within people’s assets, and this needs to be addressed as the “home” is becoming an increasingly significant financial asset which changes throughout people’s lives. It is no longer just for one generation but for multiple generations. 

As we look ahead to 2023 in the UK, we remain focused on partnering with banks, wealth managers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, IFAs and fintechs, to deliver powerful property insights that can be digitally embedded into their customer journey, transforming customer engagement, and overall business performance.