Forget the Summer doldrums: something is subtly changing in the housing market. I’m calling it cautious optimism. The numbers still look weak, I’ll admit.
Rightmove says asking prices fell 1 per cent in July, to £372,359. That’s a steeper drop than the usual July dip, and sales are running 6 per cent behind last year. Buyers spent the month watching football and looking for ways to stay cool. Viewings came a distant third. Nationwide barely moved.
Lloyds, which used to be Halifax, crept up 0.2 per cent. Flat, in other words.
So where does my optimism come from? Partly from the man in Number 10. Burnham arrived with a plan to build council homes at a scale we haven’t seen since the war, reform stamp duty, and tear up the planning rules that strangle supply.
The latest data shows asking prices fell 1 per cent in July
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Whether any of it works, and what it costs, none of us yet know. He has promised much and priced almost none of it, which is standard these days.
But mood matters in this market, and the mood has turned a little. Under Starmer, every speech felt like a warning. Tighten your belt. Brace for pain.
Buyers heard “we are all doomed” and stopped buying. If the plan was to prevent property inflation with fear, well, it worked.
But Burnham talks about building, growth, and handing power back to the towns Westminster forgot. It’s early, and it’s vague, but it points forwards. Starmer only ever pointed to the exit, and eventually took it.
That, to me, is the Burnham bounce. Nobody is buying a house on the strength of a good speech, or even those now famous eyelashes. But the tone has changed, and tone gets people picking up the phone.
However, I don’t think we should get carried away. Mortgage rates crept back up when the war in Iran spooked markets, and they could do so again.
The mansion tax lands in 2028, leaving the top end plenty of time to fret. And August is August. People are away, and those of us still here are stuck in a heatwave. That doesn’t help either.
Mortgage rates crept back up when the war in Iran spooked markets, and they could do so again
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My call for the month ahead: prices flat, and if they rise, it’ll be by enough to buy the weekly shop, just. The numbers will barely move. Confidence will edge up, just a little.
Burnham has bought himself a honeymoon. To keep it, he has to turn warm words into money in our pockets and actual homes for the millions priced out.
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