The UK housing market remained steady in March 2025, with annual house price growth holding firm at 3.9 percent, unchanged from February. This stability reflects a market adjusting to the recent end of the stamp duty holiday, which likely front-loaded activity into earlier months. Regionally, Northern Ireland stood out with a remarkable 13.5 percent annual rise, its highest since 2021, far surpassing other areas. In contrast, London saw the weakest growth at just 1.9 percent year-over-year, reinforcing the ongoing north-south divide.

Across England, northern regions outperformed the south, led by the North West with a 5.9 percent annual increase. Southern England lagged, with a modest 2.5 percent rise overall. Among property types, semi-detached houses saw the strongest growth (4.8 percent), while flats recorded the slowest (2.3 percent), suggesting a continued preference for spacious living.

Despite global uncertainties, market fundamentals remain sound. Low unemployment, real wage growth, strong household balance sheets, and the prospect of lower borrowing costs underpin confidence. In essence, activity may be soft in the short term, but momentum will likely build into the summer.

The Nationwide House Price Index (HPI) provides house price information derived from Nationwide lending data for properties at the post survey approval stage. Nationwide house prices are mix adjusted; that is, they track a representative house price over time rather than the simple average price.

Home values affect much in the economy especially the housing and consumer sectors. Periods of rising home values encourage new construction while periods of soft home prices can damp housing starts. Changes in home values play key roles in consumer spending and in consumer financial health. During the first half of this decade sharply rising home prices boosted how much home equity households held. In turn, this increased consumers' ability to spend, based on wealth effects and from being able to draw upon expanding home equity lines of credit.

Although the Nationwide data are calculated similar to the Halifax method Nationwide substantially updated their system in 1993 following the publication of the 1991 census data. These improvements mean that Nationwide's system is more robust to lower sample sizes because it better identifies and tracks representative house prices. Historically, the data go back to 1952 on a quarterly basis and 1991 on a monthly basis.

Over long periods the Halifax and Nationwide series of house prices tend to follow similar patterns. This stems from both Nationwide and Halifax using similar statistical techniques to produce their prices. Nationwide's average price differs because the representative property tracked is different in make up to that of Halifax.