This is Home Front with Vicky Spratt, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
Hello and welcome to this week’s Home Front. Recess approaches in Westminster, and I’m hearing that Labour’s long-awaited long-term housing strategy will be announced after the summer break.
Later, I’ll also stick my head above the parapet to say that I don’t think proposed amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill are quite the “climbdown” that Yimby’s argue they are.
I’d also like to draw your attention to how giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote could change housing policy.
But first, let’s talk about house prices!
Historically, homeownership has been the British dream because owning a home has been very, very lucrative.
If you bought a house reasonably cheaply in the 1980s, 90s or just after the 2008 financial crisis, it probably made you more money than your job.
In 1980, the average UK house price was £19, 273. In 2020, it was £239,927 – a whopping 1,155 per cent increase over 40 years. But in some particularly desirable areas, you’d have seen a far steeper climb in value.
House prices then went on to peak in 2022, with the average home costing £286,000.
These are nominal values – that’s the actual price people paid. But, even adjusted for inflation, real house prices still outpaced wages over several decades.
This made owning a home a good investment and turned some homeowners into millionaires.
However, data suggests that it is all changing. Britain’s housing boom may have ended, and buying a home now, at the top of the market with prices at near historic highs, will not make you rich.
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Why? Because house prices seem to have stopped rising and are heading for another flat year. As I’ve written in this newsletter, the housing market has largely stalled with fewer people moving – either as buyers or sellers – than anyone would like or hope.
Government data shows on average house prices have fallen by 3.7 per cent since March 2025 even though they remain 3.5 per cent higher than this time last year.
London has experienced a slight rise in prices, which might be explained by a rush to complete sales before the stamp duty cut ended in May or by the fact that London contains luxury markets that operate differently from the rest of the housing market.
However, in the North East, there have been major monthly price falls of 8.1 per cent. The South West experienced the lowest annual price growth of any region, with homes worth just 0.9 per cent more than they were a year ago.
Earlier this month, major building society Nationwide’s data appeared to confirm that prices were going down. They reported a drop of 0.8 per cent in average prices – that’s the biggest monthly fall recorded in two years.
Another indicator points to the fact that sellers’ expectations are finally being adjusted to meet a new reality where homes do not automatically increase in value by tens of thousands of pounds.
According to the property listings site Rightmove, asking prices – which reflect how much sellers think their houses are worth – have just fallen by 1.2 per cent. This is the largest fall for 20 years.
A fall in asking prices is particularly significant because it means the penny has finally dropped for sellers – their homes are not worth what they wish they were worth or, even, what estate agents tell them their worth.
We have entered a new era for the housing market. The boom looks to be over. And, instead of a bust, we might be experiencing a realignment. A heavy dose of realism has been delivered by the fact that inflation is back, and given that it just rose further away from the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, it may not be going anywhere soon. The era of cheap credit, which fuelled house price rises, is over.
The epic house price inflation of the 1990s, 2010s and 2020s may not be repeated again. Or, certainly, not for a very long time.
The house price party has ended. In years to come, few people will buy homes as investments to make money on. Instead, they will pay eyewatering sums for somewhere they hope to live and, unless they have rich parents, plan to pay off well into old age.
This might not be as bad as it sounds, though. If house prices stabilise and continue to fall gently (as opposed to rising or crashing down), homeownership could become more accessible, and the housing market might just end up being a less frenzied place. A housing correspondent can dream, anyway.
Firstly, a group of self-defined “pro-growth” Labour MPs are very unhappy that the Government has made some tweaks to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to appease concerns about the environmental impact of new developments.
The changes mean developers will have to outline the environmental impact of their build in the planning process and that they will only be allowed to destroy nature – e.g. ancient woodlands and chalk streams – when they can show that they will take steps to more than mitigate the damage.
Some feel this will delay new development, but, honestly, I was chatting to The i Paper’s environment correspondent Lucie Heath about this earlier and we both agree… it is probably quite sensible.
There’s plenty of land to build on in Britain, lots of it is brownfield and when it isn’t, careful consideration should be given to the environmental impact without unnecessarily impeding housebuilding.
Secondly, you’ll remember that last week the Government confirmed their plans to go ahead and extend the right to vote to 16- and 17 year olds. They will also be introducing automatic voter registration (AVR).
This could have a huge impact on housing policy. Why? Because loads of private renters are about to suddenly be eligible to vote.
The lobby group Generation Rent have told me that they estimate that AVR could increase the registration rate of this country’s 4.7 million households of private renters from 65 per cent to 91 per cent.
“This is a big win for us and will be a great way to empower private renters,” Generation Rent told me.
“Research conducted by Generation Rent found that AVR could mean there are 2.3 million more private renters able to vote at the next election.”
Vicky’s pick
I’m afraid I spent most of my (very rainy) weekend at a soft play in south London with my three-year-old nephew. But, when I wasn’t going down “the wiggly slide” or watching Migration with him, I was reading this very interesting column in the Financial Times about Britain’s falling birth rate.
What if, Janan Ganesh writes, some people just don’t want to have children and all of the arguments to persuade them – such as we need more young workers to pay tax – are failing to convince them?
Personally, I love soft play. I think all adults should have padded rooms where we can lie down, scream, shout, play with our friends and hit things. Perhaps the pronatalists should consider that?
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