Whatever happened to the great Brexit property crash? The stock market has been pummelled on occasion since the referendum in 2016 but none so much as housebuilders’ shares. They suffered one downward loop immediately after the Brexit vote. Then again, as the chances of a no-deal Brexit increased towards the end of 2018, it was housing shares which suffered the most, with Taylor Wimpey, Barratt and several others plunging by 30 per cent, as rumours of sliding house prices took hold.
And then? One by one, as housebuilders’ results came through, they turned out to be actually rather good. When Barratt reported on 6 February, for example, revenue was up 7 per cent, profits up 15 per cent, margins 2 per cent and sales volumes 4 per cent. The main housing indices have held steady. True, the Halifax index produced a headline-grabbing monthly fall in prices of 2.9 per cent in January, but that followed a 2.2
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