If a house price crash sounds like good news, you should think again | Gaby Hinsliff

Dire warnings of a no-deal Brexit could be seen as helpful to first-time buyers. But a downturn would hurt those who can least afford it the most

House prices are falling. Those words feel like the first fat drops of rain, falling after a long summer drought, bringing not so much sadness as sweet relief. The housing market has been running far too hot for too long. Lives and prospects are parched. A change in the weather is surely just what everyone needed.

Besides, the 1.7% fall in average house prices recorded by property website Rightmove this month sounds like more of a light shower than a monsoon, especially as it mainly affected London and the commuter hotspots of the south-east. If nervousness about what’s going to happen after Brexit is forcing greedy homeowners to be a bit more realistic, or developers to think twice about converting city landmarks into obscenely expensive flats for the super-rich, then arguably that’s all to the good.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2U023oQ