Not for the first time, a widely-predicted – and for many frustrated buyers, hoped-for – house price crash has failed to materialise. The Office for National Statistics’ House Price Index (ONS HPI) shows average prices up 0.3 per cent in the month of August and up 0.2 per cent since August 2022. This is at odds with the Halifax House Price Index, which put house prices in September at 4.7 per cent lower than a year earlier. But it is a more complete data set based on all sales across the UK. The Halifax index, by contrast, is based on mortgage approvals by the Halifax bank – and there is no guarantee that all the mortgage approvals actually went through to completion.
But even if you prefer to take notice of the Halifax Index (which effectively runs two or three months ahead of the ONS HPI) it hardly amounts to a housing crash – at least not yet. So
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