House prices are widely expected to fall this year, as soaring mortgage rates substantially cut how much buyers can borrow.
But there is a wide gulf between the predictions that various property experts have issued. They range from falls of 12pc, forecast by analysts Capital Economics and Oxford Economics, to modest slumps of 1pc to 2pc, being predicted by estate agents Chestertons and Jackson-Stops. Hamptons has predicted prices will be flat.
So which forecasts should be trusted this year? The Telegraph examined the expert predictions for 2022 – and whether they came true.
What happened last year?
Mortgage lender Nationwide said house prices rose by 2.8pc in the year to December. Prices peaked in August and dropped for four months in a row, which was the property market’s worst run since 2008, it said.
Rival lender Halifax said prices rose by 2pc last year; the numbers differ slightly because they are based on each lender’s sales rather than the entire market. Based on the average of the two indices, the annual rise for 2022 was 2.4pc.
fficial data from the Office for National Statistics, which takes in the entire market rather than mortgaged buyers, is not yet available for 2022 because of a lag in publishing data.
Which forecasters came closest?
The closest predictions for last year came from Pantheon Macroeconomics, an analysis firm, which at the beginning of 2022 forecast that prices would rise by 2.5pc.
This year, Pantheon has said house prices will plummet by 8pc. This prediction is shared by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and Halifax.