Prices Are Not Falling; They Are Also Not Rising in Ways That Suggest They Know What They Are Doing

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

By Lowri Griffiths | BigSmokeBroke.com

The Market

The North London housing market in May 2026 has achieved the specific condition of being neither the thing estate agents want it to be (rising confidently) nor the thing buyers want it to be (falling usefully) but instead the thing that the combination of elevated mortgage rates, reduced transaction volumes, and the general uncertainty about economic direction produces: aggressively stable, which means staying where it is while generating the maximum possible commentary about whether it is about to go somewhere.

The Mortgage Rate Effect

The mortgage rate environment that 2025’s base rate decisions produced has filtered through to the specific North London housing market as: fewer transactions, longer selling periods, and the particular frustration of sellers who priced for the 2022 market and are learning through the 2026 market what their property is actually worth in the interest rate environment that prevails when the buyer also has to pay the mortgage. Both parties are experiencing the market. Both are experiencing it differently.

The First-Time Buyer Situation

The first-time buyer situation in North London in 2026 is the situation it has been for approximately fifteen years: the deposits required for the mortgage that the property prices require are the accumulation of years of saving that the rent that the property prices also require makes difficult to accumulate simultaneously. The mathematics of this situation are available to anyone who performs them. They produce the same result every time. The policy responses that would change the mathematics have been proposed, debated, partially implemented, and partially reversed across multiple governments.

What I Think

I think the North London housing market is doing what it always does when nobody knows what is happening: nothing, while charging its usual prices for the privilege. Read NewsThump.

More: NewsThump.

London continues to be London, which is simultaneously excellent and frustrating and expensive and alive in ways that other cities are not quite alive in the same configuration. The journalism that covers this city at the level of the street and the neighbourhood and the individual experience serves the function of making the city legible to itself. That function is what this column provides. It continues because the city continues, and the city is worth covering because it is worth living in, which is the conclusion that the rent payment and the energy bill and the commute and the queue for the theatre ticket all confirm in their own way, eventually.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week.