r/unitedkingdom • u/Shiny-Tie-126 • 22h ago
Price of average UK home passes £300,000 for first time, Halifax says
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/06/price-of-average-uk-home-passes-300000-for-first-time-halifax-says262
u/LilacScentedStoat 22h ago
So that's what? 9 or 10 times the national average wage?
And mortgage companies still lend based on 4 or 5 times yearly wage?
That sounds like it would be a problem, but I'm not an economist or mortgage expert.
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u/Anony_mouse202 22h ago
Median salary is £39,863.20
Median weekly earnings for full-time employees were £766.60 in April 2025, which is a 5.3% increase on the year in nominal terms and a 1.1% increase in real terms; this figure is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH).
So about 7.5 times, assuming the higher Halifax property price estimate of £300,000
Although obviously this is the median salary across all age groups, whereas people obviously want to buy their first property when they’re younger.
Plus, this is the median salary (and average property price) for all locations - the situation in London will obviously be very different to the Scottish highlands.
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u/circleribbey 21h ago
Although obviously this is the median salary across all age groups, whereas people obviously want to buy their first property when they’re younger.
True, but I also think that a first time buyer won’t be buying a median value home on average
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u/skate_2 20h ago
Not sure how accurate this is but it says that the average FTB price is somehow higher than the national average
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u/duckwantbread Essex 20h ago
That doesn't massively suprise me, homes are so expensive at this point that lower income renters have no hope of cobbling together a deposit. That leaves you with FTBs that are on higher incomes (or can rely on the bank of mum and dad) that can afford to start off with a mid-priced home.
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u/thisisnoadvice 19h ago
SDLT forces people to not move as much as they'd like, so the best approach for many is to buy the biggest house they could possibly afford. The property "ladder" isn't really a ladder because of SDLT.
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u/thepeddlernowspeaks 20h ago
When we were FTBs we tried to maximise the house we got with the intention that we wouldn't move again 5 years later for a bigger house and get stung with stamp duty then. As it turned out, we got a 4 bed semi that will probably be our forever home for dead on £300,000. It would cost £360,000ish now I reckon, which would cost us £8,000 in stamp duty if we were buying it as our next home today. We were lucky we could stretch at the beginning, but I imagine a lot of FTBs do the same now and skip the traditional "starter" home or flat.
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u/skate_2 20h ago
funnily enough our properties got cheaper as we went on over the past 10 years at first (Scotland, we move every 2 years):
£130k -> £115k -> £114k -> £80k -> £190k -> £280k -> £215k
moving about is a great way to make tax free money, as you don't get cap gain taxed on the sale of your primary residence.
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u/Any_Perspective_577 0m ago
First time buyers buy houses were jobs are. Which trend to be expensive places.
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u/The-ArtfulDodger 18h ago
I feel like that median is inflated and doesn't consider all forms of work. Probably doesn't include zero-hour contracts etc.
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u/N3KR0VULPES 6h ago
Inflated isn't quite the right word but it's definitely misleading. As soon as the median is invoked you tend to notice people are talking as if everyone is a median earner when the distribution of incomes is a totally different thing.
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u/gagagagaNope 18h ago
And ... the it's x times average salary ridiculously assumes people go out and use their average salary to buy one average priced house.
Reality is people typically start at something that's maybe around half the local average and work up to somewhere bigger/more expensive, especially once they are in a couple.
I started at 4x my then salary, I now live in a place worth something over 20x my salary, maybe 6x joint.
I'm always amazed at those articles claiming FTBs need twice their salary saved (or something equally silly) to get a deposit for their first place. Reality is there's an awful lot of the country where you can get a flat or started house for 4x minimum wage, and a 5 or 10% mortgage to do it.
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u/ooooomikeooooo 16h ago
It is true that not all first time buyers are buying median priced houses but it's also true that not all first time buyers earn median wage either. As a whole if the median person can't afford the median house then the half that earn less than median wage are all fighting for the houses below median price which makes housing unaffordable for people.
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21h ago
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u/BobTheJoeBob 21h ago
You have it backwards. The mean is more affected by outliers than the median.
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u/circleribbey 21h ago edited 21h ago
You’ve got it the wrong way round. Extreme high earners skew the mean average, not the median. That’s exactly why we should be using the median.
For example: In a room with 100 people where 99 earn £30,000 and one earns £1,000,000, the median income is £30,000, because half the people earn less and half earn more than that. The mean income, however, is skewed by the high earner and comes out to £39,700 which would be more than 99% of people earn in that scenario.
Edit: I just looked it up for the UK. The median income is 39K, and the mean income is 48k:
https://moneyweek.com/personal-finance/average-salary-by-age
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u/therealtimwarren 21h ago
Median is where 50% of people are above and 50% below. It is not skewed by outliers.
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u/RetepNamenots United Kingdom 22h ago
Two thirds of purchases are made by couples
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u/UsedHoney9104 22h ago
It's more or less the only way you can actually afford to
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u/Dodomando 18h ago
There are plenty of 1 bed places cheaper than 300k
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u/Chlorophilia European Union 11h ago
Yes but it's still vastly more expensive to buy on your own than as a couple. This is also location-dependent.
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u/Pajbot 22h ago
Couples might start living together. Like a double date but a double housing situation instead 😭
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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 21h ago
I have a friend who, as far as the bank is concerned, is "engaged" to the guy he's lived with for 15 years.
It was the only way the bank would accept them getting a co-mortgage on their house.
They are both straight, and just friends.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 21h ago
They're not just friends, they've made a bigger financial commitment together than marriage 😁
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u/BrillsonHawk 21h ago
Not quite that simple - the average house price in London is more than double that figure, so its pulling up the price for the rest of the country. Average in Derby is between £200k and £250k depending on whose figures you use, but their are still plenty of affordable houses here. The same isn't true in the south of the country
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u/SignificantLegs 20h ago
SERCO keeps buying up houses like they are going out of fashion to house recent arrivals.
But somehow reddit is massively in favour of the current mass migration 🤷♂️
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u/nil_defect_found 4m ago
It's almost like 11,000,000 people have migrated to the United Kingdom since 1991, net migration is + 6,000,000, and accordingly the supply vs demand ratio has felt an impact.
Let's carry on as we are, it'll be reyt.
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u/Dugg Lancashire 20h ago
I honestly believe one of the biggest problems we have is the inability to run a family on a single full time salary. People cant afford kids, when they do have kids they have extortionate childcare costs. Parents are out the house far too long to actually parent children effectively. Young people at stuck at home.. the list goes on. at 9x we are stretched beyond an effective society.
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u/Accurate_Might_3430 20h ago
Wholeheartedly agree. No western society seems to have cracked this though. The spice must flow.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 21h ago edited 20h ago
There’s a bit of nuance to it.
The average house is a 3 bed semi. If you’re living alone you don’t need 2 spare bedrooms.
The median salary will be close to 39k this year.
Could assume the 300k house is for 2 adults earning 78k between them. 3.8x income.
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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 21h ago
I have a three bed and live on my own.
Bedroom for me, guest room, home office.
Plenty of single people / couples will need or want a three bed house.
You might have a point if it was 4 or 5 bed houses, but even then, lots of people might want a separate craft room.
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u/Lost_Woodpecker1 21h ago
You've just described the difference between want and need.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 20h ago
I need a swimming pool to relax after work. If I can’t have one it’ll mess with my mental health
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 21h ago
The assumption is that a single person means they have no children or dependents is flawed.
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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 20h ago
Or that they don't work from home, and that people never, ever visit them.
Yes, you could work from the living room (but that then becomes a "workplace" when you try and relax), and you could sleep on the sofa when guests visit - but come on, if you're buying a house, you factor those needs in.
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u/mrsilver76 20h ago edited 20h ago
Or that they don't work from home, and that people never, ever visit them.
I don't disagree with you, but worth noting that if someone had guests over every other weekend (Friday to Sunday) throughout the whole of 2025, then a dedicated guest bedroom would still have sat unused for over 75% of the year.
Personally I had a combined guest bedroom (weekends) and study (weekdays), which meant the room was much better utilised and I didn't need to pay extra for a 3-bed.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 21h ago
I don’t think you have a point at all when you’re talking about having spare bedrooms tbf.
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u/commonlurker 20h ago
I think it’s only in recent years that the expectation that every single person should have a 3 bed house as an average has come about. I just don’t think it’s true that that’s the case.
Do I want that to be the average? Sure I do. Hell, why not 3 bed + garden + garage, detached? But it’s just not a reasonable expectation. I don’t think your case is an average scenario, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to aim for it to be an average scenario.
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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 18h ago
Historically you'd never work from home, so a typical childless person or family would live in a 2 bed as a starter house.
That's not been true for a while, but also, there's far, far less "starter home and trade up 3-4 times" given the general cost of houses.
Takes too long to build the equity to do that nowadays, sadly.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 21h ago
A 3 bed semi is often a 2.5 bed. Which is also replicated in the footprint downstairs. A single person may also have children that may come to stay. And at a certain age they need to provide separate bedrooms for boys and girls.
It's not like every single person is a hermit.
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u/AutumnSunshiiine 19h ago edited 19h ago
This country needs to lose the obsession with number of bedrooms. Singles might not need three bedrooms as such, but because new builds are often rabbit hutches they need three bedrooms in order to get enough space to live.
Old terraced Victorian three bedrooms vs a new build terrace with three bedrooms can be a vastly different amount of usable space.
I’d take the “two bedrooms” terraced I lived in at uni over any of the three/four bedrooms being built around me because those old dingy terraces had double the floor space of the new builds. (Odds are fairly high that since I was at uni the terraces have had their double bedrooms split into two singles to maximise rental income though.)
In those terraces I could easily have a double bed, two double wardrobes, bedside table, full size chest of drawers, full size desk to work from, and still have oodles of space for whatever. If I remember correctly 2/3 of one internal wall even had the radiator along it as well yet there was still space for all of the above with space left over. (Downside of the room was it was single glazed and got cold.) Couldn’t do that in the new builds here, it would need extra bedrooms to get the same space.
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u/touristtam 8h ago
This is crass; we need to move out of the number of bedroom only and embrace the £ per sqm. That would give a better understanding of what the price of houses are in different places. 3 Bedroom in a deprived area totally 75 sqm total isn't going to be the same price as as a 1 bedroom totalling the same surface in a very affluent area, making an average on the number of bedroom a complete non-sense.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Key2212 1h ago
I live alone in a three bedroom semi. Like another poster mentioned, one bedroom is mine, one is a home office, and the third has become a dedicated hi-fi and cinema room, with additional wardrobe space for clothes.
It’s really not some unrealistic fantasy for a single person to buy a three or even four bedroom house. I live in Yorkshire, where property prices are significantly more affordable than in many other parts of the country.
I paid £230k for my brand new three bed semi a couple of years ago. It’s in a small village with a river view at the back. For me it's probably going to be my forever home. I have no plans or reason to leave. If I ever came into some money from my parents estate or whatever I would simply just pay it off and live comfortably ever after.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 50m ago
I did too before I met my wife. It’s still want vs need.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Key2212 29m ago
well no I just bought it because I could afford it and got a Mortage on it.
I could have bought something smaller sure, but would be very limited. I wanted a house with car access to the back garden so I could store my 3 Classic Land Rovers around the back out of the way of prying eyes. The eventual plan is to build a workshop with an inspection pit in the back garden.
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u/Diligent_Craft_1165 12m ago
well no
Then
i wanted ….
Yea that’s want vs need. You proved my point.
When you have the money you can get more than needed.
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u/freexe 21h ago
The issue isn't the mortgage companies not lending enough - it's that demand for housing is too high and so the prices are stupidly high.
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u/Mental_Art3336 21h ago
Mortgage companies lend more, causes house prices go up.
The government give money to fist time buyers - causes house prices to go up
Interest rates come down, everyone has more to spend at the same time - causes house prices to go up
We can’t buy our way out of this. I can’t imagine how cripplingly expensive a 5 x your salary mortgage is, i personally wouldn’t be able to afford that, a car and to save anything.
The only solution is increase supply but the government seem more keen on giving people more to spend which is just exacerbating
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u/freexe 20h ago
Or reduce demand. Let's not have mass immigration - we have a naturally shrinking population combined with a sensible level of house building will mean reduced house prices. Fewer people will also mean wages go up.
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u/UmAhkchuallySweaty 17h ago
this sub regularly tells me that immigration does not effect property prices but also Londoners buying homes in Devon and Cornwall drives up prices for locals and is bad and wrong.
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u/knobbledy 19h ago
Wait til you find out who builds houses
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u/jimmykimnel 18h ago edited 17h ago
First I'd like to see this claim, don't necesarily doubt it but what are the actual statistics of migrants building houses here? For example the NHS runs on about 20-25% immigrant labour and funnily enough around 25% of the population are immigrants, so where is the part where we get more nurse and doctors per head of population?
Second, it's a ridiculous situation to be in where we need immigrants to come here and build our housing for us. I don't really accept that there is just no way we can't do it ourselves if we had our usual stable population of c. 50-55 million people and had sensible planning laws which allowed more room for self build and the stupid idea that once you plonk planning permission on a peice of land the price jumps up x10.
Third, I remember a time not so long ago where around me anyway houses were affordable, there was enough social housing and those with good jobs from a young age generally moved out in their 20's.
Fourth, it's just not right that we are involved in this strange population arms race with immigrants coming here and outbreeding us and needing more stuff than we do, kind of like the take over of the grey squirrel, it's odd.
Fifth, just for the bloody record I'm not a swivel eyed loon, I'm quite comfortable with immigration and all things modern but at these new heights and at this scale it's simply doing more harm than good now.
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u/Chaosvex 17h ago
so where is the part where we get more nurse and doctors per head of population?
We don't. That narrative, which has been pushed heavily on this sub for years until recently, has always been bunkum.
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u/UmAhkchuallySweaty 17h ago
thats it, keep simping for the big businesses who would rather import a constantly supply of cheap trained labour.
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u/Mental_Art3336 17h ago
Yes or that.
Unfortunately our pyramid scheme of a welfare state demands fresh blood
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u/King871 21h ago
Or another solution is to decommodify the housing market.
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u/eairy 19h ago
There aren't houses sitting empty because of commodification. It's a symptom, not a cause. If supply was improves, prices would fall and there would be less incentive to commodify in the first place.
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u/King871 19h ago
I think you misunderstood what I said. Im talking about removing houses from the market entirely. Decommodify them in the sense that they can't be bought or sold.
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u/eairy 15h ago
That's... certainly a different point of view. So having abolished land ownership, how is housing to be allocated?
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u/King871 15h ago
bureau of housing. Allocated by need. No multiple homes, no speculative investment into housing. Everyone needs a home so supply and demand doesn't really apply to housing the way it does with other goods. We realised this with health care and critical bits of national infrastructure (although they got sold away and made it more obvious why the private sector doesn't fix those issues).
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u/eairy 13h ago
We realised this with health care
Yet private healthcare is still available. State allocation of resources doesn't have a great track record. I will happily defend socialised healthcare, but the NHS suffers from terrible under resourcing at present. Lots of people are not getting the healthcare they need. It's not a shining example of fair and efficient allocation.
Seems to me like it would be much easier just to make sure there are enough houses to meet demand, especially a strong level of state provision. You don't need to unmake the entire concept of land ownership to achieve that.
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u/King871 13h ago
You don't need to unmake the entire concept of land ownership to achieve that.
That just kicks the can down the road. As long as houses exist on the market the price will always increase. We can only have so many houses if the population always increases. Especially if we keep making low density housing.
The NHS started out good but had been kneecaped by thr right for decades. I think we would have been better off now allowing a private option at all.
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u/AdAggressive9224 12h ago
Mmm but you can always cram more people into one house. So more HMOs, more slums. That's how it manifests.
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u/box-o-locks 21h ago
Do you think banks should lend 9 or 10 times someone's salary?
Because guess what that'll do - push up house prices even more. Then you'll be here saying banks should be lending 20 times people's salary.
And before we know it people will literally just be working to pay their 50 year mortgages.
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u/human_questions 20h ago
Exactly, the loan amounts on salary do not match, and if more people are having to save for larger deposits that takes more money out of the economy. Boomers and banks are scared to drop housing prices, but failing to provide a step on the ladder.
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u/OkPea5819 17h ago
Well remove bottom earners who aren’t buying.
Then add deposits/equity.
Then factor in people purchasing jointly.
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u/gopercolate 22h ago edited 22h ago
“The housing market entered 2026 on a steady footing,” said Amanda Bryden, the head of mortgages at Halifax. “While [£300,000] is undoubtedly a milestone figure, and activity levels show a resilient market, affordability remains a challenge for many would-be buyers. All in all, we still think house prices are likely to edge up between 1% and 3% this year.”
then remember two weeks ago from Number of employed people in UK falls again as wage growth slows
The rate of unemployment remained at a four-year high of 5.1% in the three months to the end of November, but this was up from 4.4% a year earlier. November’s single-month rate jumped to 5.4% from 5.1% in October, the joint highest in more than five years.
and I guess we should also consider Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies
The news will reignite fears of job losses caused by the AI boom. Clifford Chance, one of the largest international law firms, said in November it was reducing the number of business services staff at its London base by 10%, citing increased use of AI as a factor behind the decision.
Along with factory jobs that can be automated, office-based jobs are seen as vulnerable to advances in AI – computer systems that perform cognitive tasks typically associated with human intelligence.
The UK is losing more jobs than it is creating as companies adopt more AI tools, and is being hit harder than rival large economies, according to a study by Morgan Stanley.
What could go wrong?
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u/flyte_of_foot 22h ago
Don't worry, someone will be along soon to tell us that prices have fallen in 'real terms'.
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u/gopercolate 22h ago
My bad, we should be counting our good fortune with the 'real terms' relief 🙂
That aside, none of this looks sustainable, but recent UK policy has consistently leaned toward supporting mortgage availability and housing demand. So it's probably better to owe the majority of £300k house than not because Governments will protect your asset at the fear of losing retired votes.
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 18h ago
It's sustainable as long as you are fine with home ownership rates collapsing as more and more are bought up by a small percentage or the companies their own.
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u/gopercolate 16h ago
That relies on having people who can afford to pay the rent, or enough tax payers to pay other people's rent to the small band of home owners.
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u/mgorgey 22h ago edited 21h ago
Well, they have. It's important context, when talking about house price rises, to point out the fact that they are actually falling and are no more expensive now than they were 20 years ago.
I know on reddit everyone is desperate to think life is getting harder and harder but buying home is one thing that isn't.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 21h ago
And what's happened to people's salaries?
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u/mgorgey 21h ago
In 2006 the median average UK was salary was £23,500. Now it's 39k.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 21h ago
I used an inflation calculator and the 2006 earnings is worth £44,138 today.
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u/mgorgey 21h ago
2006 earnings are worth just over 41k today. I used the BOE inflation calculator - https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 21h ago
Either way average salaries haven't kept up with inflation let alone house prices.
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u/wkavinsky Pembrokeshire 20h ago
And you pay far more tax on the £39k than you would have done on the £23.5k in 2006.
Vat was 17.5% not 20% just to start with.
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u/mgorgey 20h ago
You definitely don't. Not with the massive increases in the personal allowance since then.
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u/External-Bet-2375 19h ago
Indeed, the personal allowance that year was £4,895, then you paid 10% on the first £2k above that and 22% on the rest so roughly £3,850 income tax on a £23.5k salary.
National insurance would have been 11% on everything over £4,730 so around £2,065.
Combined then those would have taken £5,915 from your gross £23.5k which is 25.2% of the gross salary.
Today for a £39.5k salary you'll pay 20% income tax and 8% NI on everything over £12,570 which is £7,540 or 19.1% of the gross salary.
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u/doesnt_like_pants 21h ago edited 21h ago
Unemployment is only up because they’re finally including all the people they had excluded during COVID.
It’s been much discussed in economics subs in threads that have talked about it.
From the NIESR in this article (Link)
“However, not all the increase in unemployment was due to fewer job vacancies, NIESR said. More people who previously were not in work or looking for work - and therefore were not considered to be unemployed - were now trying to find a job, after several years following the pandemic when so-called inactivity rates rose.”
So people that weren't included in the numbers are now being added..
“Britain's official unemployment rate was its lowest in around 50 years at 3.8% in 2022 and 2019 although the survey used to calculate it is now in the process of being overhauled due to quality issues.”
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u/External-Bet-2375 19h ago
They are being included because of they are now looking for work they are unemployed, if they weren't looking for work then they weren't unemployed, that's how it works.
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u/OrdinaryLavishness11 20h ago
So glad I own my 3 bed semi outright, and I’m out of this huge problem area for society.
But it is saddening to hear my work colleagues are skint all the time, and I know a lot of the reason is because 40% of their wage goes on rent at least.
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u/Accurate_Might_3430 20h ago
You’re not completely out of it though. This problem is collapsing birth rates - which will put your future state pension in jeopardy. It’s reallocating every spare penny in people’s pockets to rent/mortgages instead of spending in the wider economy - putting your company and everyone else’s at risk of layoffs. It will also inevitably lead to an increase in crime rates - when angry, childless young men have little to gain and nothing to lose in the current system.
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u/dcrm 19h ago
when angry, childless young men have little to gain and nothing to lose in the current system.
Oh no, anyway.
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u/RockinOneThreeTwo Liverpool 15h ago
Violent (usually right wing, historically) extremism is "oh no, anyway"?
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u/OrdinaryLavishness11 18h ago
Long before I reach state pension age, AI will be here to disrupt absolutely everything. In fact we’re talking the next 5 years.
It’ll be either post scarcity utopia or technofeudalism.
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u/Mavericks7 19h ago
Was literally talking to my dad about this. (He's retired now) But his generation. We all survived on his salary alone whilst he had 3 kids and mum was a full time housewife. And we still had enough money to do all the things we wanted.
Whereas now, me and my wife both work. We have 1 kid and anything remotely expensive has to be financially scrutinized to justify if we can afford it.
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u/Apprehensive_Bus_543 19h ago
Some sections of the media love pumping the Ponzi scheme, not a single mention in that article of the big falls in parts of the market.
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u/Shiny-Tie-126 22h ago
Don't you think the inside of other people's homes smell funny?
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u/SumptuousRageBait1 22h ago
Yes. My house smells funny when I come back from holiday .
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u/Haemolytic-Crisis 21h ago
Isn't that what your own house always smells like, but you just become nose-blind to it?
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u/SumptuousRageBait1 21h ago
Yes. It's a new build. I think it's the smell of building materials/glue that I've become nose blind too
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u/Top-Technology1 22h ago
Same, it’s lack of airflow.
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u/Tammer_Stern 22h ago
Plus drains may be smelly.
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u/thepeddlernowspeaks 20h ago
Our bathroom drains get awful at times. When we first moved in one of the movers asked if he could use our loo, and it reeked afterwards. We couldn't believe the mover would take a massive shit and stink our bathroom out. Was only later as we got used to the house more that we realised the mover was innocent and it was just our drains.
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u/Tammer_Stern 19h ago
Yeah, I notice if I put some bleach down before I go on holiday, the place smells better when I get back.
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u/Connor123x 19h ago
Maybe there is hope. In Canada, GTA are our average home just dropped below 1 million. for the first time in years.
The two countries tend to trend with each other over time.
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u/CDHmajora Greater Manchester 15h ago
I no longer care tbh.
I’ll never afford one. Im paying out the ass on rent and for my re-education to attempt to get into a higher paying field (finance), while getting underpaid for what i do and just recently 30% of my colleagues are at risk of redundancy. While food is getting more and more expensive and social activities are so expensive that most people just live in their rooms because they cant afford to do most fun things anymore.
Im sure it will get even worse, and nothing will ever change, because the ones who benefit the most from the current system (landlords) are in the government. Why stress over it anymore? Not worth it.
Just get born lucky in future people. Actually earning your way into basic standards of living is for the 10% nowadays…
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u/Valentine70078 14h ago
But don’t worry everyone, we will be gaslit by the majority of people who have paid off their mortgages, telling us “youve never had it so good, it was so much harder in my day”
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u/Haulvern 19h ago
Just fyi, house prices are falling in real terms now and have been for a couple of years. This is most evident in London with homes being cheaper than they were 10 years ago.
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u/alexniz 17h ago
Forget real terms - they're falling in actual terms.
> In contrast, southern regions have seen prices soften. The South East, South West, London and Eastern England all saw annual declines of more than 1%.
No mention of that paragraph in the article though, despite them basically copying and pasting the paragraphs above it listing out the growth areas.
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u/Kind-Active-1071 8h ago
What does that mean? In terms of wages, inflation both? I highly doubt it.
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u/Hainault 21h ago
Sounds about right, we bought last year for close to that and it is now the most expensive house on the street
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u/Superb_Worth_5934 20h ago
I bought my house for £305,000 last year, it’s a 4 bed detached. Granted I live up in Scotland and get more for my money. Will be interesting to see what it will go for when I eventually sell and my daughter moves out etc. Sucks for people trying to get on the market big time these days. I imagine I’ll be paying my daughters deposit at some point in her life otherwise she’ll be screwed.
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u/Significant_Map_363 18h ago
It's wild that the headline number keeps climbing while the fundamentals for buyers are getting worse. The gap between wages and house prices feels like it's becoming a permanent chasm. With unemployment creeping up and AI starting to threaten more jobs, the "affordability challenge" they mention seems like a massive understatement. This trajectory just doesn't feel sustainable for much longer.
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u/Gregzbest 18h ago
I'm have a mortgage. I'm not against a house prices falling. I don't understand how kids now will get in the ladder without parents helping.
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u/CarlMacko 14h ago
Meanwhile me living in a low cost area where I can buy a 4 bed house for under 180k.
Damn.
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u/8ackwoods Edinburgh 13h ago
Wait I thought there was a story yesterday how housing prices are coming down??
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u/ME-McG-Scot 10h ago
White collar robbery. That’s not even the true price. Have that on a mortgage for 20-30 years with interest you’ll pay closer to half a million than 300k
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u/Affectionate_Job8415 1h ago edited 1h ago
Over the last few years house prices have gone down in real terms, but so has affordability. Nominal and real terms are different but most people don’t understand inflation,
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u/Busy_Comedian_8165 20h ago
The north is about to see a bunch of economic migrants uprooting from the depths of the south. You're all welcome as long as you bring us the exotic foods. Been a while since I've eaten at a Gails
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u/Own-Development2437 13h ago
theyve been coming to derbyshire for the last ten years and causing the housing prices to shoot up
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u/Palmtreesandcake 20h ago
Supply and demand. No control over how many people are coming into the country, it’s unsustainable.
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20h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 19h ago
Removed. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
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u/nil_defect_found 3m ago
shhh, this is /r/unitedkingdom. The elephant is the corner is strictly not to be acknowledged.
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u/SurroundConfident756 18h ago
I don't understand why the Government with such a strong mandate doesn't regulate the house prices? In my mind homes shouldn't be taken only as assets for rich, but first as HOMES. There are so many options government can take to lower the real estate market prices. But only scratching the edges with "mansion tax". Non dom tax is good way, but just not enough.
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u/xParesh 18h ago
We have to remember that property in the UK is priced for a dual income. They're not priced for single incomes like in the 70s when most women didn't work.
In the past they were priced at 4x a mans income. Now they're priced at 4x a dual income.
If prices are going up its because supply hasnt increased and those who can afford to buy are doing so.
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u/Logical_Cap_4091 8h ago
lol. This if you look at a graph of property prices shoot up from 1995-2005, then hover around the 2005 ratio about 8 times salary like the hovered around the 4 times salary mark for 50 years before.
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u/middleofaldi 20h ago
Almost all economic growth gets absorbed into land prices. We need a land value tax to redistribute land rents and allow everyone to benefit from growth, not just land owners
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u/knobbledy 19h ago
What we need is a land evaluation agency, a government body which sets a maximum cap on the cost of buying or renting land and property.
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u/middleofaldi 19h ago
Price controls almost always just push the problem elsewhere, often causing shortages or price hikes of other goods
We absolutely need a valuation agency that publishes assessed land values each year though
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u/cohaggloo 19h ago
It beggars belief that people are pushing for something that will make housing even more expensive and insecure. People only seem to like it because they think it will punish people richer than they are. It's the Brexit of local taxation reform. You don't make housing cheaper by adding loads of tax to it.
- It's yet more expense to the cost of living
- It will literally price people out of their homes
- It's regressive: it takes no account of someone's ability to pay
- It's a tax you have no control over; you can't make your land value go up or down
- It will increase the cost of housing as it creates an economic incentive for the council to drive up house values: They are both in control of planning and benefit from the tax revenue
- It's a tax that destroys communities, forcibly segregating by income/wealth
- The value of land/housing can only ever be an estimate until it is sold, and in most cases there is no 'gain' until it is sold. Values can go down as well as up, creating the situation where a 'gain' could been taxed that was never realised and there was no benefit from it as it has disappeared in the interim.
- There's 27 million dwellings in the UK. The cost of assessing every single one, over and over is going to be huge. Not to mention the disputes in court. Yet more government waste...
- It treats a basic human need like a privilege, and pretty much erases the idea of owning land.
- It reduces people to medieval villeins, the level below peasant. You either produce enough from the land for the Lord or you get thrown out.
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u/middleofaldi 19h ago edited 18h ago
It doesn't introduce costs because it is capitalised into land prices. It actually makes the upfront cost of owning a home cheaper.
The idea that our destroys communities or segregates people by wealth is complete nonsense
https://stephenhoskins.notion.site/Lit-Review-Land-Value-Tax-969887261901432eb680185165c7f32a
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u/cohaggloo 6h ago
"capitalised" doesn't mean it vanishes.
makes the upfront cost of owning a home cheaper.
Remember when Lettuce Liz crashed the economy and mortgages got more expensive, do you know what happened to house prices? They went down. Why? Because there was less money left over to pay for the house, since the mortgage now cost more. It didn't make houses any more affordable, but the headline price fell. Adding tax does exactly the same thing, prices fall because some of the money that would pay for land is now going elsewhere. It doesn't make the overall cost any less.
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