LONDON: The housing market in United Kingdom faces \u201csignificant\u201d tests from higher borrowing costs and fears of tax rises in next month\u2019s budget, agents warn.<\/p>\n
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said its index of house prices improved slightly to minus 28 in August, up from minus 29 the previous month.<\/p>\n
The indicator has remained below zero \u2013 meaning more agents report price falls than rises, since April 2025.<\/p>\n
Agents expect further declines over the next three months, with a particularly weak outlook in London.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s property market has been relatively resilient despite a surge in mortgage rates due to the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
RICS\u2019 gauges of buyer demand and sales volumes improved in August, suggesting the market is \u201cgradually finding its footing\u201d, said Tarrant Parsons, the institution\u2019s head of market research.<\/p>\n
But he suggested that stability could now be at risk.\u00a0 \u201cThe Bank of England\u2019s increasingly hawkish tone, on the back of renewed volatility in global energy markets, is a reminder that the borrowing cost outlook could yet deteriorate further.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speculation that Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey will increase property taxes is \u201csource of caution for both buyers and sellers\u201d, he said. \u2014 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON: The housing market in United Kingdom faces \u201csignificant\u201d tests from higher borrowing costs and fears of tax…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[253150,253151,253153,59,57,58,253148,253147,253149,50,2295,253152,56,253146,54,55],"class_list":["post-766744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-bankofengland","tag-borrowingcosts","tag-buyerdemand","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-houseprices","tag-housingmarket","tag-mortgagerates","tag-news","tag-property","tag-propertytaxes","tag-uk","tag-ukhousing","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}