Money Distilled

What Berkeley’s Woes Tell Us About UK Housing

Geopolitics is revealing just how vulnerable the housing market is to interest rate uncertainty.
Banners at the entrance to a Berkeley Group Holdings Plc residential construction site in Cranleigh, UK, in February 2024.Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
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Welcome to the award-winning Money Distilled newsletter. I’m John Stepek. Every week day I look at the biggest stories in markets and economics, and explain what it all means for your money.

Earlier this week, UK mortgage lender Nationwide reported a surprisingly upbeat set of house price statistics for March. Annual house price growth ticked up to 2.2%, from 1% in February. That’s still negative in “real” terms — ie, after inflation. But it was higher than economists surveyed by Bloomberg had anticipated.