British Home Investors

The housing market isn’t just about individual transactions — it’s a system.

A chain.

And when movement slows down, the impact is felt across the entire market.

If first-time buyers can’t get on the ladder, existing homeowners can’t move up. That means downsizers don’t release stock, and chains become more fragile and more likely to collapse.

The result is a slower, more stagnant market.

Not because people don’t want to move, but because fewer people are actually able to.

🏠 It looks like you’ve made money on paper.

You buy a property for £300,000. A few years later, it’s worth £310k or £320k.

But when you come to move, the reality is very different.

You don’t just sell — you have to buy again. And that’s where the costs quickly add up.

Stamp duty, estate agent fees, legal costs, mortgage costs, moving costs, and inflation all eat into that “gain”.

By the time you factor everything in, you may need to achieve £350,000 or more just to stand still.

But if the market is only supporting £300k–£310k, that gap becomes very real.

It’s one of the most overlooked parts of the housing market.

📊 UK government spending is now sitting at around 45% of GDP, which is historically very high.

When spending reaches these kinds of levels, something usually has to give. Either costs are reduced, or economic growth accelerates and helps close the gap through higher tax revenues.

But the current environment looks very different.

Growth is weak, productivity is weak, the population is ageing, and the cost of servicing debt is rising.

So instead of meaningful cost reductions or policies designed to stimulate growth, the approach has shifted toward increasing revenue.

That means higher taxation and more pressure on working households and businesses.

And those pressures don’t stay isolated. They feed directly into the wider economy, including the housing market.

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📉 There is a limit to how much you can tax an economy.

Once taxation pushes beyond roughly 38% of GDP, you risk entering a doom loop. You can increase tax rates, but if the economy shrinks as a result, you end up collecting less overall. You’re simply taking a larger share of a smaller pie.

That is the risk the UK is now facing.

Government spending currently sits at around 45% of GDP, while revenue has historically been closer to 38%. That gap means we are spending significantly more than we earn as a country.

And when the maths doesn’t work, something has to fill the gap.

Debt.

UK government debt is now roughly 100% of GDP, meaning the country owes about the same as it produces in an entire year. The interest on that debt is now around £100 billion annually.

That’s the pressure building in the system.

📈 Some economists argue that property markets move in roughly 18-year cycles.

If you map the major UK housing peaks, the 1990 crash and the 2008 crash sit about 18 years apart. That would theoretically point towards another turning point around 2026.

Now I’m not suggesting we blindly follow cycles. But when you overlay what has happened over the last decade, the pattern starts to look familiar.

After the 2008 crash we saw a long recovery from 2009 onwards. Around 2016 there was a noticeable mid-cycle wobble. Then between 2020 and 2022 the market entered an explosive phase driven by Covid stimulus, stamp duty holidays and ultra-low interest rates.

There was liquidity everywhere.

Now the environment is changing.

Liquidity is tightening, and historically housing markets tend to feel that pressure first.

📈 These two graphs tell the same story.

One shows UK house prices over the last few decades. The other shows money supply growth over the same period.

The curves look remarkably similar.

When you track the percentage increase in money supply year by year and compare it to the increase in average house prices, the difference over the entire period is only around 1.25%.

That’s not a coincidence.

For decades the system worked in a very predictable way.

Money supply expanded. Credit became cheaper. Buyers could borrow more. House prices rose faster than wages. And inflation gradually eroded the real value of debt.

That’s why the housing model held together for so long.

But today that model is beginning to break.

🏠 We do not currently have a shortage of homes for sale.

We’re seeing record levels of new listings, falling real prices, rising fall-through rates, and demand growth trailing supply growth.

That is not what a classic supply shortage looks like.

What we actually have is a demand problem.

Demand isn’t falling because people don’t want homes. It’s falling because homes are too expensive relative to incomes and credit conditions.

This is also where population debates often miss the point.

You’ll hear that house prices are high simply because population is growing. But population alone does not determine prices.

Purchasing power does.

Imagine one million new entrants with an average housing budget of £300,000. Now compare that to 100,000 entrants with an average budget of £600,000.

The second group is far smaller in number — but potentially far more influential on prices.

Markets respond to money, not just people.

That distinction matters.