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Halifax House Price Index January 2023

ended 06. February 2023

On Tuesday morning at 07:00, the Halifax building society is publishing its January 2023 house price index. If you'd like the chance to appear in the national, local and trade media, just reply to any or all of the questions below.

  • How active were you in January? Word on the street is that things were more buoyant than expected….
  • With the Bank of England saying the recession will be shallower than expected, that inflation has peaked, and unemployment will not rise as much as anticipated, could the property market fare better than expected in 2023?
  • Though the base rate was hiked again last week, it seems we're nearing the top of the interest rate cycle. Will this bolster confidence among buyers?
  • Which is the most active demographic at the moment? FTBs, landlords?
  • How much of an issue is affordability for buyers right now?

Any other insights, jot them down. If you're a premium user, your response will be edited by an experienced news journalist to make it as strong as possible.

11 responses from the Newspage community

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David Conway
Director at Clayhall Financial Services Ltd
The property market was buoyant in January, after a juddering December. There's almost a 'feel good factor' emerging as buyers are surprised at access to fixed rates of 4%. Mortgage rates are on a downward spiral. The current 2-year swap rate is almost 4% and 5-year at 3.25%. Borrowing at 3% will still seem cheap even if it's double the rates of recent times, and expect that pattern to continue. Lender confidence has them actively competing for buyers' business and they are also being innovative in the buy-to-let market. With affordabilty and lending calculations expected to improve, unemployment now predicted by the Bank of England to not rise as much as expected and inflation slowly getting back under control, 2023 should be a year of recovery not carnage. The projected house price drops should be nothing but a blip.
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Gary Bush
Financial Adviser at MortgageShop.com
January was busier than expected, showing signs that the general public has now factored the higher fixed rates into their budgets. We are optimistic that the UK property market in 2023 will represent good value to buyers and be a busy period on the whole. The expected 0.5% increase, last week, in the Bank of England base rate was already baked into lenders' fixed rates and, pleasingly, we saw a fixed rate at sub-4% appear for the first time in three months — a welcomed signal from a confident UK lender. We're seeing a mixed bag of applicants coming to us, mainly remortgagors and first-time buyers. Affordability is tricky with lenders' black box guided criteria proving troublesome. Our secret is that we have invested heavily in Open Banking links to our client's accounts making affordability calculations fit lenders' needs.
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Nick Harris
Co-founder at Quarters
Activity was busier than expected in January given buyers went into hibernation at the tail end of last year following the mini-Budget. After a quiet first half of the month, once the schools returned buyers and sellers alike were back in touch and, interestingly, we’re starting to see some pre-pandemic seasonality return to the market. At the moment the discretionary buyers are staying at home but those with a compelling reason to move are active, albeit often with revised budgets given affordability due to higher rates and inflation. Given the current level of buyer activity, we expect prices to hold and perhaps even increase marginally throughout the year. Last week's base rate increase appears to have had little impact on buyers, and while mortgage rates continue to trend downwards, albeit marginally, market confidence remains stable.
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Justin Moy
Managing Director at EHF Mortgages
January has been nearly 300% better than December, but that's not a difficult increase to achieve. The mix of enquiries has been from all corners, first-time buyers, upsizers and landlords alike. Landlords have noticed that rates have fallen, and the professional ones are definitely keeping an eye out for a bargain or two. The Bank of England has signalled their forecast of a peak in the base rate, which should give the signal to the market to launch cheaper fixed deals. Long-term rates are now below 4%, and others will follow in due course. This will give everyone a boost, especially those home movers who were scared by the thought of rates of around 6%-7% before Christmas. The opportunity to buy, over the cost of renting, still makes it an attractive option to jump on the homeowning ladder.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
Confidence in the housing market is low and despite the Bank of England revising its forecast for the UK economy, it is still expecting to raise rates further and is predicting a recession lasting over a year. This is not good news. The housing market will continue to fall this year, and it won't be until summer until confidence returns. This is when the central bank is most likely to start slashing rates. This will be a result of an incoherent policy of rate rises in the face of a recession. Sit on your hands and wait for the sunny weather before entering property in 2023.
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Nicola Schutrups
Managing Director at The Mortgage Hut / William James Wealth Management
We've seen inbound enquiries from new customers increase to "pre-Truss" levels with lots of customers now coming to terms with the rate shock they had in Q3 and Q4 of last year. Activity in the market for us has gone from around 40 customers a day contacting us to around 80 a day, which is nearly back to our normal average during the height of the market. Customers seem more confident that rates are coming towards their peak and, as with all markets, there is a necessity to move, whether that be through marriage, divorce, birth, death or something else. What we have noticed is a shift in customer preferences back towards shorter fixed rates and also discounted and tracker rates as the perceived risk of increasing rates reduce.
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Gaurav Shukla
Managing Director at Home Me Mortgages
The first couple weeks of January were quiet, which was the usual hangover from Christmas. Since then, it's been much busier with a lot more first-time buyers coming back to talk to us. I suspected this would be the case as fixed-rate mortgages have been reducing consistently. The housing market in 2023 won't be as bad as first feared and I genuinely believe we are heading in the right direction. Affordability is still an issue for buyers at the moment, especially those with existing debts or on incomes lower than £50k, as the cost of living has increased and with energy prices due to rise again, this will have further impacts. Towards the end of the year is when we will see affordability eased further off, as energy prices hopefully come down.
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
Whilst the economic picture is looking slightly better, the housing market fundamentals haven't changed. Mortgage rates are likely to remain, at best, double what they were in late 2021, making affordability extremely difficult for many. About 1.2m mortgage holders will be remortgaging onto those much higher rates this year. Landlords are selling up in droves either because it's no longer profitable or they can't refinance, or both. And we're heading into a recession. All these factors will put downward pressure on property prices. The good news for first-time buyers and those looking to buy a bigger home, is house prices are falling fast and are likely to continue falling well into next year. My best guess is a 15%-20% decrease in 2023 and a 25%-30% drop peak to trough.
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Zaid Patel
Director at Highcastle Estates
January was far stronger than we'd expected. The first week back was very quiet, as usual, but now we have four sales agreed. Two buyers are investors, and the others are first-time buyers. The first-time buyers met the asking price, as both sellers weren't rushing to sell. In comparison, the investors both had offers accepted 10%-15% below the asking price. Both sellers are landlords, now on a variable interest-only mortgage, which increased considerably. It will be an interesting time ahead. On top of that, this weekend we have an open house for a property that needs complete refurbishment. There are 37 buyers booked in, varied between first-time buyers and investors, with four cash offers, under asking, already on the table. Still, we're confident we can achieve above asking price. There's life in the property market yet.
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Rob Gill
Managing Director at Altura Mortgage Finance
Mortgage activity picked up strongly from mid-January. After a short buyers' strike in the aftermath of September's mini-budget, softening property prices have started to attract buyers back to the property market, aided by falling mortgage rates, which are now approaching pre-mini-Budget levels. With inflation and base rate both looking like they've peaked, the outlook for the housing market is a lot rosier than many of the dire forecasts of a few weeks ago.
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Austyn Johnson
Founder at Mortgages For Actors
It's still a fact that the UK cannot build houses fast enough, and I'm still getting enquiries for all types of property, from new build to residential, from commercial to buy-to-let. Things are not slowing down for us, we are simply adapting to different areas of the business. If the market stays like this until it has stabilised, I can foresee a big boom in the market when the property market has bottomed out. Landlords will be snapping up all of this cheaper housing and then remortgaging it to release equity once house prices are back up again.