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Welcome to your weekly briefing on important things affecting the housing market.

As a subscriber, the facts hit your inbox first. BUT it is always worth tuning into the live stream, as there may be a couple of last-minute additions. Find the live stream here:

Remember: If you’ve recently rented, bought or sold a home, please report your price to the BestAgent Public House Price Index.

This week’s top 5 housing market facts:

1. When the very industry that provided the debt that has, above all else, priced a whole generation out of home ownership, is now proposing that easier access to more debt is the solution... 🤷🏻‍♂️ But it’s government policy that has caused this. The lenders will always lend as much as they can. That’s the widget they sell. Widget sellers sell widgets and campaign to be able to sell more widgets.  https://www.cityam.com/generation-locked-out-of-home-ownership-in-uk-housing-crisis/

2. UK car production falling even before JLR shutdown  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-24/uk-car-production-slumps-even-before-jaguar-land-rover-shutdown

3. Bond buyers (the investors who lend the UK government money) are losing confidence in the government. This creates more problems for Reeves even before the budget.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-25/uk-budget-angst-hits-gilt-auctions-as-investor-appetite-fades

4. Kirstie Allsopp newspaper story “The Property Market is Dead” will have an impact. Rightly or wrongly a lot of people trust here.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buying-selling/kirstie-allsopp-the-property-market-is-dead

5. We may have a new Labour leadership challenge from a man who wants to borrow £40bn to build council houses. That gets my vote.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/24/andy-burnham-mps-want-me-to-challenge-starmer/#:~:text=%C2%A340bn%20of%20borrowing%20to%20build%20council%20houses

6. Overvaluing Agents delusion shines through in Telegraph article on why multi-million pound homes won’t sell: “Ryan’s agent, Anthony Jevons, advised that knocking half a million off the price wouldn’t help, as it wasn’t the reason the property wasn’t moving.” FFS! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buying-selling/millionaire-homeowners-cant-sell/

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Charlie's Thought of the Week:

It’s not immigration (even though that does cause problems). It’s this.

The young in the UK can no longer afford to buy a home. Most have to wait until their mid-30s at least, but increasing numbers are giving up completely on the dream of ever owning a home. 

The list of the public’s favourite culprits to blame is long. At the top is immigration, then banks, estate agents, mortgage brokers and greedy sellers.

We mustn’t forget Help to Buy, that terrible scheme that enriched government donors to staggering levels, at the expense of many buyers who were in negative equity for some time afterwards.

Money printing is often blamed too, and of course not enough new homes being built (apparently) makes many people think that the supply can’t keep up with demand and “it’s supply and demand mate” isn’t it?

I cannot claim the credit for this, it is his royal Stigginess (Alex Groundwater) https://x.com/alexgroundwater who did the detective work, ploughing back through decades of data from the Bank of England, the Land Registry and the ONS (back when they were somewhat more reliable than today). 

Is it the government? Yes, but when you look at the fact that successive governments of all different parties are guilty of the same sin, you realise you have to look even further.

It is us. We, the people. The electorate, who, time and again, are seduced by promised of bringing the “dream of home ownership closer”. 

Who wouldn’t want to vote for that! Bigger mortgage multiples? Yes please! That means we can get on the housing ladder, at any cost! There are lenders now offering up to 7x salary for new builds. 

Monthly repayment a little too high? No problem! We can just extend your term by 5 or 10 years, and your monthly payment will be cheaper!

Precisely speaking, it is the increasing of leverage (salary multiples) “You can now borrow 7 x your salary!”, and/or the lengthening of terms, allowing more to be borrowed without the monthly payment increasing, that stokes house prices far more than anything else. 

It’s the only lever they can pull, and the lending industry is making all kinds of noises about it needing to happen again. Because of all those poor first time buyers who can’t afford a home. We want to help them! We’re so caring and considerate. We’ll lend them more, if only the government would let us. 

Let them! Let them! cry the voters. 

So, we, the underpaid, overworked would-be home buyers keep on begging for them to do the thing that made homes unaffordable in the first place. Again and again.

And they (the government) keep obliging us, by changing the rules and allowing the lenders to lend more to more people. 

And so it goes on.

On Tuesday evening at 8pm, Stiggy will be on a special livestream with me where we will spell out carefully what has caused the housing affordability crisis, how it happened, and what needs to be done to unwind the problem. 

As you’ll see, if you watch on Tuesday, this isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s hard, verifiable fact. 

So, we need to let people know that the more they take these offers up, the less their kids will be able to afford when their turn comes. 

We have to pull the power out of the price-pumping machine, once and for all, and let it gradually settle back down to a reasonable 4 x salary. 

Have a great weekend. 

In case you missed anything this week…

All the signs are really bad. Should buyers wait? Live Q&A

A Sh*t Day

Most viewed post this week on X:

Most viewed video this week on TikTok:

@movinghomewithcharlie

Why You NEED to Cut Your Asking Price!

That’s all for this week!

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Have a great weekend, lots of love and luck to you all.

Charlie