Halifax House Prices: Muted With Downside Risk As Spreads Make Year-Tights

Halifax house prices: first fall in six months and commentary cautions that prior rate rises are still to feed through. UK housing remains a finely balanced market with clear downside risk (especially in light of oil’s recent step-up) yet broad credit is trading at near year-tights.

• Much as the annual rate of growth is still positive (+0.3% in Mar-24), there is a relatively large m/m fall of 1.0%.
• HFX economists note that homeowners on longer-fixes are still not feeling the impacts of prior rate rises yet with “the housing market still to fully adjust”. They do note recent positive mortgage approvals figures (but at a thin time of year in housing transactions) and also that the rate path appears less dovish than a few months ago.
• Overall, quite muted commentary and that lead-lag in the increased popularity of longer fixed-rate mortgages over the last 15-20yrs is a real challenge for the BoE rate-setters.