5FF Housing Stig in the House: Bond Market Panic Hits Mortgage Rates

One week until the Budget, I went live to take your questions. I started with the latest borrowing figures: the government borrowed another £24.5 billion in September, and interest on our national debt is now £11 billion a month, which is more than it would cost to scrap stamp duty on main homes for a whole year. With inflation up again and a base rate rise likely in November, uncertainty is only going one way, so I set out exactly what I would do right now to make a move more certain as a se...

Tonight I went live on Rightmove's u-turn on house prices. After months of headlines about record asking prices, Rightmove now says September 2026 was the busiest month for asking price reductions since 2011, with just over 3,000 listings a day being cut, and that homes priced competitively from the start sell far faster. I explained why that message comes too late for many sellers this year, why buyers set prices, why overpricing pushes buyers away for good, and whether now is a good time to...

Sources for every fact: https://mhwc.co.uk/blog/5-fact-friday-16th-october-2026/

5 Fact Friday: the housing market is in "Limp Mode", with listings backing up into a jam. Five facts on what's happening in the UK property market right now, plus your questions from the chat.

Tonight's live was a little different: a first-of-its-kind update on BestAgent, the home moving marketplace built to halve transaction times and fall-throughs. I went through the seven groups of people involved, from the advisory board, exec team and platform partners to estate agents and the BestAgent Club, home movers, the media and chip holders, then shared some facts and figures on the platform's scale today: around 4,000 registered movers, 1.1 million properties in the system and 43 appl...