This is Armchair Economics with Hamish McRae, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
The housing market is going through a tough time – or at least in much of the country it is, and in some places it is really gummed up, with it taking two months or more to sell a home. The property website Zoopla reports that the average is 42 days, so for many it is much worse.
As a result, a growing number of people feel trapped in their homes. It seemed a sensible, responsible idea to get on “the housing ladder”. Now they are stuck on the bottom rung.
So, what’s happening, why and what should people do about it?
The facts are pretty clear. Overall prices are steady, with the latest official index from the ONS out yesterday showing them up 0.1 per cent in June, and up 2 per cent on the year. But that bumps together losses in London (down 2.5 per cent on the year), a stable market in the South East, and gains of 4 per cent or more in the North East and North West. Scotland and Northern Ireland are well up too. That dovetails with the evidence on how long it takes to sell, with homes in parts of Scotland and Northern England turning over fastest, and those in Westminster in central London taking longest. Overall turnover is running at around two-thirds the level of 2022.
