Homemaker Properties

⚽️ The World Cup officially kicked off this week – and this year it’s the biggest tournament in history, with 48 countries heading to the US to take a shot at glory.

⚽️ The last time a home nation lifted the trophy was 30th July 1966, when the average UK house price was just £3,558. 🦁🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

⚽️ Since then, property prices have never stopped scoring. Rising around 77x, the average UK home now costs £274,930.

⚽️ The 2026 prize pot is a record-breaking $727 million (£541m) – enough to buy 1,968 average-priced UK homes. Now that’s a result.

Could this be the summer it finally comes home? ⚽️🏆

Source: Dataloft by PriceHubble, Nationwide

🏠📈 ECONOMY UPDATE 📉🏠

📊 The UK economy grew by a stronger-than-expected 0.6% in Q1, helped by a resilient services sector. Timing also played a role: the conflict in Iran, which began in late February, had not yet fed through into the data. This marks a sharp improvement on the three preceding quarters, each of which delivered growth of just 0.1 to 0.2%.

📊 However, the strong quarter did little to lift the annual growth rate, which current sits at 1.2%. The stronger quarterly growth did lift forecasts for the year though, consensus forecasts have been revised up to 1.0% growth for 2026, from 0.6% a month ago – a modest upgrade.

📊 Q1 does likely represent the high point for the year. Higher energy costs will weigh on the growth outlook for the remaining quarters.

📊 The strength of the relationship between economic growth and house price performance has been well-evidenced over decades.The implication for housing is overall low single-digit price growth. As ever, there will be scope for regional and localised variation, driven by where buyers have more room to absorb higher borrowing costs.

📊 One potential upside to the economic outlook is AI-driven productivity gains. The timing of any such gains remains difficult to predict, for now consensus forecasts point to a slowdown but this is a genuine swing factor worth watching.

🔗 Source: Dataloft byPriceHubble, Nationwide, ONS, HM Treasury Consensus Forecasts