This morning has seen Rightmove update us on the UK property market and in response we have learnt where Bloomberg journalists live.
London house prices fell the most since the beginning of the year in June as the capital’s property market continued to lag behind the rest of the country.
The price of property coming to market in London dropped by 0.9 percent, bringing the average price to 631,737 pounds ($838,000), property-website operator Rightmove said in a report Monday. Values fell 1 percent from a year earlier, marking the 10th negative month in a row.
The rest of the country only gets a brief look in.
Nationally, prices grew 0.4 percent on the month and 1.7 percent on an annual basis.
Then it is time to get back to the heart of the matter.
In London, “new-to-the-market sellers recognize that the traditionally busier spring selling season is drawing to a close,” said Rightmove Director Miles Shipside.
Oh and as it is Bloomberg there is a consistent scapegoat for pretty much all seasons.
London’s property market has been hit particularly badly by uncertainty surrounding Britain’s impeding exit from the European Union.
Actually we get a reminder of what Rightmove really say from property industry eye.
New asking prices have bounced up to another record, averaging £309,439.
This morning Rightmove said asking prices for properties new to the market are 0.4% up on last month, and 1.7% up on June last year.
The Rightmove data is not for the price at which property is sold it is what sellers are asking for the property or trying to get. In terms of a rising price by this measure then it is a northern thing as the stock available has declined.
From the west midlands northwards, stock has fallen away since a year ago, by between 2.2% and 10.4% in Scotland.
Stock has also dwindled in Wales, by 10.3%.
Whereas prices are under pressure from something of a wave of more housing stock coming onto the market in the south.
By contrast, the amount of available stock has shot up almost 25% on a year ago in the east of England; by 20% in the south-east; by 16.4% in London; 8.2% in the south-west; and by 4% in the east midlands.
Land of Confusion
I am using the Genesis lyric because if we move to LSL/Acadata we get told something very different about London house prices.
Despite the lack of movement in prices, there is one big change in the market this month: London and the South East are no longer a brake on the market. Taking into account these two regions, there was a 2.2% annual price growth – taking them out of the equation, the growth rate is lower – at 2.1 %. It reverses the trend of most of last year.
Although we have learnt from past experience to feel something of a chill when we read something like this.
This is partly due to a change in methodology, which better captures sales of new build properties. These tend to cost more than existing homes and have a particularly strong impact on the average price in London.
In fact the major impact from this is on flats in London.
This was particularly pronounced for flats, where new build flats sold at an average premium of almost
a third (32.3%). They also made up a substantial proportion of sales of all flats, accounting for more than a quarter (26.4%), whereas new builds accounted for just 2.4% of sales of detached properties.
Once you have done that you get this.
The revised figures in London, taking into account new build properties, show annual growth of 2.9%, the lowest since March 2012. Prices also fell on a monthly basis, down 0.3%, taking the average house price in the capital to £636,947.
In case you are no aware the issue of how to treat new builds is a difficult one and is one where the official Office for National Statistics series has had trouble too. Obviously a brand new property cannot have a price rise per se but you can calculate an index based on say quantity like size or number of bedrooms. Much more difficult and perhaps impossible is to allow for the quality of the property.
Also treating London as one market gets a bit of a critique from reality below.
A number of London boroughs are recording big falls over the 12 months to April 2018. They include the City of London (down 24.9%, albeit on a small number of sales), Southwark, down 19.1% (largely as a result of high value properties sold the year before); and Wandsworth, down 13.1%. Growth has been more modest, with only Kensington and Chelsea, the most expensive borough, recording double-digit growth, up 10.4% to £2.17 million. The next highest increase over the year was Lambeth, where prices increased 5.8%.
The issue at this level is that you are down to a small number of sales in some cases leading to large swings. For obvious reasons people like to view the data for Kensington and Chelsea but if it is based on only a handful of sales it is to say the least problematic. Although sometimes just one sale can be crystal clear at least for it.
For those wondering if the previous owners had overpaid back in 2013 I did ask.
Number Crunching
Moving on here is some Monday morning humour from the British Chambers of Commerce.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has today (Monday) slightly downgraded its growth expectations for the UK economy, forecasting GDP growth for 2018 at 1.3% (from 1.4%) which, if realised, will be the weakest calendar year growth since 2009, when the economy was in the throes of the global financial crisis. The BCC has also downgraded its GDP growth forecast for 2019 from 1.5% to 1.4%.
Yes they think they can forecast GDP growth to 0.1%!
Next come courtesy of those suffering from a type of amnesia.
Households could be left up to £1,000 a year worse off because of Brexit trade barriers, a report will suggest.
Global consultancy firm Oliver Wyman will say that under the most negative scenario of high import tariffs and high regulatory barriers the cost to the economy could total £27bn.
The problem here is the authors so with the help of FT Alphaville let me show you how their crystal ball has worked out in the past.
It has long been known that consulting firm Oliver Wyman crowned Anglo Irish the world’s best bank in 2006 — just when Anglo was actually… well, you know the story.
Sadly, the report that bestowed this fateful distinction has (quite unaccountably!) vanished from the Oliver Wyman corporate site.
Or this.
North American Investment Bank – Bear Stearns (SPI 230) is the best-performing company in this year’s most improved sector, investment banking.
Comment
After a barrage of contradictory numbers let us step back and take stock. We see that the background for UK house prices is not what it was. For example the Term Funding Scheme of the Bank of England ended in February and whilst it still represents some £126.6 billion of cheap liquidity for the banks it is now gently declining. Other factors such as a 0.5% Bank Rate and £435 billion of QE have been at play in raising prices but that has worn off now. Perhaps we are still seeing the influence of the Help To Buy scheme in the North but unless prices fall more in London many are still above its cap of £600,000.
A welcome development is that house price growth seems to have fallen back in line with wage growth although of course the official numbers still disagree (3.9%). Even that development has the issue of course that it does not help with prices being much too high in many parts of the country. As to detail all we can honestly say is that house price inflation has fallen and some parts of London especially in the centre are seeing falls.
Moving onto my new measure which refers to a block of around 80 flats near the US Embassy in Nine Elms there was an improvement this week, There were signs of life (open windows etc) in 12 as opposed to 8.
