A rollercoaster of a year: Where are we now?

One thing I can be sure of is that life seemed far simpler back then. In December 2019, the initial news around a new virus was hardly even on my radar. Yes, there may have been a little concern but did I think it would ever turn into what actually transpired? Not a chance. Thinking back, it was like something from a Hollywood movie, and a pretty bad one at that.

I think I can speak for the whole industry when I say that the end of 2019 marked a busy and hugely exciting time for the housing and mortgage markets. The talk all revolved around the potential opportunities ahead. Of growth and expansion plans. Of record business levels and market resilience. I could go on.

Looking back, it’s frankly amazing that some of this talk is actually still highly relevant in the present day and that is testament to the amount of resilience shown by the housing market and the commitment of lenders, distributors, conveyancers, surveyors, intermediaries and homebuyers. To say this has been a rollercoaster of a year is something of an understatement but here we are, and thankfully we can look forward with cautious optimism rather than the blind panic which engulfed us only a matter of nine long months ago.

The journey from then to now has been well charted and we don’t need to go too far down that path. Let’s focus on the present rather than the past, although we must not ignore the invaluable lessons we learnt along the way.

So where are we now?

House prices show no sign of slowing down having risen by almost 8% over the last year with the vast majority of that coming in the last five months. According to the latest Halifax House Price Index, the last five months from July to November have seen the average house price rise by 6.5% – the strongest five-month gain since 2004. The price of an average property rose by 1.2% in November to £253,243 taking it 7.6% higher than November last year. This 12-month increase was suggested to be the strongest since June 2016.

The lender noted that the stamp duty saving of £2,500 on a home costing £250,000 is now far outweighed by the average increase in property prices since July. And it added that properties sold to home-movers recorded a much higher rate of annual house price inflation of 7.9%, compared to the 5.8% rise in first-time buyer properties.

In addition, UK lenders approved 97,532 mortgages in October, the most since September 2007, according to the Bank of England’s Money and Credit data. The housing market has gotten busier, as there were 92,091 given the green light in September, compared to 85,704 in August. Before the pandemic, there were 73,384 mortgages approved in February, before the amount fell as low at 9,335 in May.

Of course, this only tells part of the 2020 story but when analysing the raw data then you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m writing this on the back of a ‘normal’ year. And this simple fact underlines just how far the housing and mortgage markets have come in 2020 and why we should all be proud of both the resistance and brilliance shown across the board in overcoming such adversity.