Around 1m UK homes have lost all their pandemic price gains, Zoopla estimates
Weaker market conditions led to housing values starting to fall back in the second half of 2022, the website said.
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Around one million homes across the UK have now had all the gains in value made during the coronavirus pandemic wiped out in recent months, according to calculations by a property website.
Using its own valuation estimates, Zoopla looked at increases in property values since February 2022 and compared this with how prices have performed in the past six months, as the market has weakened.
It estimates that around 1,046,000 properties have lost all of the gains in value that they had previously made during the pandemic.
By contrast, nearly 20.6 million homes are estimated by Zoopla to have not lost any of their pandemic gains in recent months.
Some properties have also lost some, but not all of their pandemic gains.
Zoopla said weaker market conditions led to housing values starting to fall back in the second half of 2022.
Despite the UK’s housing market seeing a tumultuous end to the year in 2022, the vast majority (92%) of homes increased in value across the year as a whole, with an average gain of £19,000, the website calculated.
Some 2.3 million homes registered a fall in value across 2022, according to Zoopla’s figures, with an average loss of £7,300.
Zoopla estimates that 15.8 million homes fell in value in the last three months of 2022, while 13.9 million made gains.
Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, said house price gains made earlier on in the pandemic “have started to be eroded in the final half of 2022 as buyer demand weakened in the face of higher mortgage rates and weaker growth in household incomes”.