The UK housing market has retained momentum in recent years despite house prices far outpacing wage growth.
House prices are rising almost twice as fast as wages. Figures from Nationwide show that they have increased by 25.6 per cent since January 2019. In the same time period, average wages in the UK increased by only half as much (13.5 per cent).
Annual house price growth in the UK has stayed in double digits for the past nine months. Further figures from Nationwide show that annual UK house price growth accelerated from 10.7 per cent in June 2022 to 11 per cent in July 2022.
This has been caused in part by the UK’s failure to build enough houses for decades.
In July, the average house price in the UK was £271,209. This comes despite inflation hitting a 40-year high of 9.4 per cent in June and the ongoing living standards crisis.
Commenting on the annual house price figures, Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said: “The housing market has retained a surprising degree of momentum given the mounting pressures on household budgets from high inflation, which has already driven consumer confidence to all-time lows. While there are tentative signs of a slowdown in activity, with a dip in the number of mortgage approvals for house purchases in June, this has yet to feed through to price growth.”
[See also: Higher interest rates mean the end of cheap mortgages]
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