UK house price growth slowed to 3.4 percent in April 2025, down from 3.9 percent in March, with monthly prices dipping 0.6 percent, a cooling that was largely anticipated. The softening follows a surge in transactions in March, as buyers rushed to beat the changes to stamp duty. This typical post-holiday lull suggests the market is catching its breath. Despite the short-term dip, the outlook remains cautiously optimistic. Structural fundamentalssuch as low unemployment, rising real wages, and healthy household financescontinue to support demand.

Additionally, falling swap rates and the prospect of a lower Bank Rate in the coming months may ease borrowing costs, helping to revive buyer confidence. As summer approaches, market activity is expected to gradually rebound, although broader global uncertainties may keep growth moderate. April's figures reflect not a reversal, but a momentary pause in an otherwise resilient housing market.

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.