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GB: Nationwide House Price Index
| Actual | Previous | |
| Month over Month | 0.3% | -0.4% |
| Year over Year | 1.0% | 0.6% |
Highlights
Annual house price growth edged up to 1.0 percent, supported by a modest 0.3 percent monthly increase, suggesting prices are rising, but without the momentum seen in earlier cycles. This gentle recovery reflects demand resilience rather than renewed overheating.
Improving affordability remains the key structural support. Earnings growth has continued to outpace house price inflation, while easing mortgage rates have reduced repayment burdens. Typical first-time buyer mortgage payments now absorb around 32 percent of take-home pay, well below the 2023 peak. This shift has helped sustain first-time buyer participation through 2025, even as broader market activity softened late in the year amid tax-related uncertainty.
Regional divergence is becoming more pronounced. London has seen the strongest affordability gains, yet remains the least accessible market, with first-time buyers earning far above the regional average. In contrast, parts of the Midlands, the North, and Scotland display more balanced conditions, where buyer incomes align more closely with local earnings. Overall, the outlook points to gradual recovery, shaped less by price growth and more by affordability-driven participation.
Definition
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.
Description
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.