-
Despite a snap Election being called, consumer confidence remains strong in bricks and mortar
-
Annual increase in house prices of 3.3%
-
The Market has found a “new normal”
Brian Murphy, Head of Lending for Mortgage Advice Bureau comments on the data released this morning by Halifax: The data released by the Halifax this morning is pretty much what most of the industry expected to see; things haven’t moved that much, and the UK property market remains on a steady course.
There will be some who’d like to interpret a quarterly cooling in house prices of 0.2% as the beginning of a downward spiral for the property market, but let’s look at the trend lines not the potential headlines. The Halifax data reports an annual increase in house prices of 3.3% – this is still in line with market expectations of annual growth between 2% and 4%, as per other industry bodies such as RICS, and a month on month increase of 0.4%. We can also see that lending volumes for house purchases in May remain within the normal tolerance for the last few months, again suggesting that the market has found a ‘new normal’ and that the warning lights on the dashboard aren’t flashing quite just yet.
