M&G: Housing dip shows UK is in slowdown

Mike Riddell, member of the M&G bond team, explains why the UK is now starting to face a slowdown.

The July RICS survey continued the worrying trend of weaker UK data that has been in evidence since the preliminary UK Q2 GDP data release on 23 July. It seems that the economic slowdown that has been evident in the US in the past few months is no longer contained to the US alone. The survey showed that UK surveyors are on balance seeing house price falls rather than rises, the first time this has been the case since July 2009, and signs of both weakening demand and greater supply meant that future price expectations turned more negative. We have focused on the UK and US housing ma...