After more than a year of surging house prices, forecasters have predicted that the market has peaked and is likely to decline next year. "The prospects for the housing market over the medium term now appear gloomier," says Karl Thompson, an economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research. He has predicted that house prices will fall by 2% in 2023. Mr Thompson is not the only one to call the top of the market, despite figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that house prices rose by 10.9% in the year to February. "We must be close to the current peak of UK house price growth. At some point in the near future the cost-of-living squeeze and rising mortgage rates will pull prices back down to earth," says Tom Bill, the head of UK residential research at Knight Frank. The housing market is being driven by demand that outstrips supply, lockdown savings and cheap fixed loans. All of which could be about to change, with inflation now at a 30-year high of 7% and set to climb - possibly to as high as 9% by the end of the year according to Keith Wade, chief economist at fund manager Schroders - as national insurance and energy price rises hit. "We already know that mortgage companies are increasing the assumed costs in their affordability calculations, which will make it harder for people to get a mortgage, " added Sarah Coles, a personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. "Meanwhile, rising prices and higher rates are feeding into the cost of new mortgages.”
The Sunday Times
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