What’s going on with house prices and the housing market more generally? This week, there’s been a sense that the tone has shifted a little, helped by more moderate falls in the Halifax and Nationwide indexes (more on those in a moment).
However, when you dig deeper, it’s not clear that much has changed.
Let’s look at the housebuilders first. Both Persimmon Plc (earlier this week) and Taylor Wimpey Plc (this morning) updated on their latest quarters. Both updates were well received, with Taylor Wimpey indicating that its results will now be at the top end of prior expectations.
But when you read the update and the earnings call transcript, it’s clear that this is mostly down to good cost control rather than a big uptick in sales or prices.
For example, Chris Carney, Taylor Wimpey’s finance director, notes that build-cost inflation has dropped from an annual rate of 6% in August “to around 3% today.” Labour inflation is already “at pretty negligible levels” (pay for subcontractors is actually falling at certain sites) so this is being driven by materials, which will presumably keep easing off from here.
But in terms of sales, as senior industry analyst Iwona Hovenko of Blooomberg Intelligence points out, trading in the second half “has so far largely matched the dire year-ago period.” I think this is worth emphasising. Remember that in October 2022, the mortgage market pretty much shut down (if only briefly). So the lack of clear improvement shows how weak the market remains.
In all, the overriding sense is of a market that’s still frozen over and showing little signs of thawing. Probably the most interesting element of the survey is that in London at least, renters are showing signs of having reached their tolerance limits when it comes to what they can afford to pay. 
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