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Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ revolution in the 1980s, the UK housing market has been an obsession for millions of people. For many, buying a home has been like a lottery win, with properties rising in value year after year, often by far more than the average wage. It has spawned an industry of lifestyle programmes pushing people to get on to the property ladder and revamp their homes.
Recently, however, things have started to go sour. Prices in October fell by 0.9% month on month, according to the mortgage lender Nationwide, in the market’s first decline in 15 months. One of the reasons was a slowdown in demand for properties as a result of spiralling borrowing costs, with a spate of interest rate rises leading to soaring monthly payments.
The Guardian’s acting money editor, Rupert Jones, tells Nosheen Iqbal that for many households, mortgage costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable. And the rise will be particularly harshly felt by those who will be looking to remortgage after a fixed-rate deal ends. But he says we should be careful how to frame a market ‘crash’, as falls of even 20% in house prices would only return them to pre-pandemic levels.
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Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
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