THE short-lived premiership of Liz Truss is directly to blame for falling house prices, according to a leading property expert.
Asked if there is a link between the former PM and falling prices, Russell Quirk. told GB News: “There’s absolutely a connection to that, because that sent shockwaves through the financial markets.
“It resulted in gilt yields and swap rates, which of course is how fixed rate mortgages are priced, increasing to the point that obviously some buyers started to balk at the prospect of buying a property.
“We do need to kind of hold our nerve. And frankly, because this is one month’s numbers from one index of which there are many, it is actually a reasonably significant monthly fall.
“The monthly fall actually is 1.4%. So, the average house in Britain, and here’s the headline I suppose, has just lost £4,500 in value.”
In an interview with Isabel Webster and Andrew Pierce on GB News, he continued: “We also need to understand that no one’s really tracking the value of their house month to month, because nobody is in the property market really on a month to month investment basis.
“We need to be reasonable and circumspect when it comes to isolated monthly numbers.
“I don’t believe that the 3% base rate or a 4.5% fixed rate mortgage, which is actually where we are, is high in historical terms.”
“The majority of people that are on mortgages are on fixed rates, so they’re currently not affected by interest rate fluctuations.
“And, of course, 40% of people in the UK don’t have a mortgage at all. So we need to hold our nerve, as I say, in terms of reading too much into this because there will be headlines, I think, as a consequence of the Nationwide numbers today, that this is now going to facilitate a house price crash.
“That, simply, in my view, in my opinion, is not going to be the case.”
On the suggestion a crash would benefit some, Mr Quirk insistied: “No, it would destroy the economy, because the housing market and the economy are linked in terms of sentiment.
“It is not to be seen in isolation, it does not now, in my opinion, facilitate a crash of the fundamentals around the property market, in particular, what facilitates demand…
“So for instance, we are a culture of home owning wannabes, everybody in every age wants to get a home. And mortgage rates are actually not only in my view, relatively affordable but of course, what also is underreported is the fact that interest rates on mortgages, so fixed rate mortgages, have already started to go down significantly compared to even four or five weeks ago.”
