Personal Account

When will the housing market realise there’s a cost of living crisis and a war in Europe?

My husband and I made an offer on a house last week, going straight in at the asking price. Reader, it was rejected. There is an alarming disconnect between the property market and reality. The latest data from lender Halifax, published this week, showed house prices rose last month at the fastest annual rate for 14 years. The 10.8pc growth, which pushed the average house price to £278,123, has not been seen since pre-financial-crisis 2007.

Zoopla, the property website, said 2022 had enjoyed the busiest start to the year for the housing market since 2016, with homes selling within three weeks of being listed on the market.

This demand is pushing up asking prices, with wide- eyed sellers seeking record high amounts in February – the largest cash jump on record compared with January, according to Rightmove, another website. Despite these sky-high price tags, estate agency Hamptons said 43pc of sellers achieved above the asking price last month, another fresh high.

That is the housing market. The reality, on the other hand, is that affordability is already at a record low, with buyers needing 7.7 times their salary to get on the ladder. Interest rates are rising, which will add hundreds of pounds to mortgages by the end of the year.

Inflation is at a 30-year high and forecast to breach 8pc this year, leading to the biggest plunge in living standards in 50 years. A few weeks from now, energy bills will soar by more than 50pc, adding almost £700 a year to the average household’s bill, and families’ takehome pay will shrink thanks to a 10pc rise in National Insurance contributions and a bevy of frozen tax thresholds.

And that’s ignoring the biggest threat to Western security since the Second World War. Russia’s ruthless invasion of

Ukraine has already displaced millions of Europeans, wiped billions of pounds off stock markets, sent food and energy supply chains into turmoil and threatened to derail economic growth.

If estate agents were forced to list those details alongside a home’s square footage and garden aspect, they might find the jostling buyers suddenly quiet.

What’s behind the market’s distorted optimism? There is a chronic shortage of supply, partly thanks to a lack of homes being built but also because of a spike in transactions last year. We are suffering the hangover of the postpandemic market frenzy. At the start of the year, the average estate agent had just 12 properties on its books. This drought is sparking desperate bidding wars when a home does go up for sale.

Stamp duty relief also drove up prices, with the deadline creating a rush to buy and the maximum £15,000 tax saving going straight into sellers’ pockets. The holiday is over, but a new house price benchmark has been set.

There could also be a sense of “last orders” at the bar of cheap debt, with buyers racing to lock in low mortgages before rates rise further.

Paul Cheshire, a professor and former government adviser, said: “In a rational world, you would see a significant house price correction six months to a year from now. That would be a fall in real prices of about 10pc.”

We will soon find out whether the property market is rational – or can defy gravity for ever.

There is an alarming disconnect between the property market and reality