Knight Frank has just released its UK residential market forecast 2020-2024 report, a summary of which is below.

Sales market forecast
The headline rate of house price growth across the country continued to slow through 2019, leaving annual house price growth for the UK 0.7% at the end of October, down from 3% at the same point last year and down from more than 6% as recently as 2016.

Uncertainty regarding the outcome of Brexit weighed on buyer sentiment through the year, particularly in London and across the South, where prices are expected to end the year either flat or falling, says Knight Frank.

The report states: “The clarity afforded by a Conservative majority in the General Election should remove some of that uncertainty – as well as the threat of an economic recession – increasing the likelihood that the UK will leave the European Union on 31 January. In the short-term, this will pave the way for the release of some of the pent-up demand that has built in recent years, though the extent to which this translates into transactions will depend on the size of the pricing expectation gap between buyers and sellers.

“The risk of a no-deal has not completely disappeared, however, and December 2020 marks the end of the transition period, potentially raising the spectre of a no-deal in the second half of 2020. Elsewhere, interest rates are also likely to begin a gradual process of normalisation in 2020, which could mark the end of a period of ultra-low mortgage rates and squeeze affordability for some purchasers. Even so, we expect rates to be low compared to long-term norms by the end of the forecast period, with economists expecting interest rates of below 2% by 2023.