Member Article

IMF New housing data & the UK property market

This week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have released new housing data aiming to track the trends in housing markets around the world. This information details the property price performance in relation to income, and rent values. With the aim in mind to keep an eye on the markets across the world, these Global House Price Statistics are watching for the booms and busts in each country, acting as a way of predicting the future of the world’s housing market.

The data shows that “house prices have risen for seven consecutive quarters and are well above their historical average in many countries.” ¹ According to the IMF figures, the UK housing market saw an annual percentage rise of around 3.4% between Q4 2012 and Q4 2013 (as illustrated in the above image), however data released by the ONS suggested that London itself experienced much higher growth over the same period, reaching a figure of 11.6%.²

The utilisation of the Global House Price Statistics was commented on by IMF’s Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu. He noted that the figures will help to promote understanding over what causes booms and busts and thus help to guard against unsustainable growth in housing markets.³ The main driving force behind the acceleration in house prices in the UK market is the shortage of supply outweighing the high demand. One of our previous blog posts discussed the fact that these potential problems could be combatted by increasing the number of new houses built in the UK. The government are currently developing plans to increase the number of new builds over the next few years – “planning permission was granted for 216,000 new homes in England in 2013 to 2014,” thus kick-starting the prevention of an overheating property market, and ensuring growth remains steady and consistent.

Sources

1 – Out-Law: Pinsent Masons, 2 – ONS, 3 - OPP Connect, 4 – gov.uk, Image sourced from the IMF website.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ERE Property .