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GB: Nationwide House Price Index
| Actual | Previous | |
| Month over Month | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Year over Year | 1.0% | 1.0% |
Highlights
The UK housing market is showing signs of cautious stabilisation rather than acceleration. Annual house price growth held at 1.0 percent in February, with prices rising 0.3 percent month-over-month, reinforcing the narrative of a modest recovery following the late-2025 slowdown linked to Budget-related tax uncertainty.
Transaction data points to strengthening underlying demand. Total housing market activity in 2025 was 10 percent higher than in 2024, with first-time buyers a key driver. Improved affordability and looser credit conditions contributed to an 18 percent annual rise in mortgage completions among this group. Home movers also returned to the market, with mortgaged transactions up 15 percent year-over-year. Mortgage approvals remain close to pre-pandemic norms, suggesting demand is structurally resilient.
Buy-to-let activity has edged higher but remains subdued, constrained by elevated interest rates and regulatory adjustments that continue to weigh on landlord sentiment. Meanwhile, cash purchases accounted for 35 percent of transactions in 2025, down from 42 percent in 2023, signalling a gradual rebalancing towards leveraged demand.
Overall, the housing market appears to be transitioning from correction to consolidation. If affordability continues to improve, activity is likely to strengthen gradually over the coming quarters.
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.