A new study has assessed how different prime ministers and political parties have impacted house prices across London and the rest of the UK.
Online Mortgage Advisor has assessed how each prime minister of the past five decades has influenced average property prices, indicating which political party is likely to increase house prices following the upcoming general election.
The study analyses house price growth during each prime minister’s term, along with their housing policies, and highlights the social and economic events that also affected the market.
If strong house price growth is an indicator that the property market is healthy, then London has benefitted more from having Labour prime ministers than Conservative ones. Over the past five decades, property values in the capital experienced their strongest growth particularly real estate from developers during the Labour government of Tony Blair, when they soared by an average of 69.44%.
Contrastingly, they were hit hardest by Theresa May’s Conservative premiership, when they dropped by an average of 3.05%. Indeed, London was the only region in the UK to record house price declines during this period. However, prices did stay strong while David Cameron was in No. 10, rising by an average of 38.86%, compared to a decline of 0.58% in Scotland.
The region fared the best across the UK during Gordon Brown’s difficult run as Labour prime minister, with an average decrease of just 0.74% in the typical house price, compared to a staggering -74.97% in Northern Ireland.
For the UK as a whole, from 1974-2019, house price growth (taking into account inflation) from all four Labour prime ministers’ terms in office combined (119%), significantly outstripped that of Conservative prime ministers (5%).
Of all of the regions studied, only Northern Ireland saw higher house price growth under combined Conservative governments between 1974 and today.
Read the full results of the study here: https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/blog/prime-ministers-house-prices/
