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Research from Zoopla has concluded that the total value of UK housing reached £10.5 trillion by the end of 2022. That represents an increase of £700 billion compared to the year before, or nearly £80 million being added to the collective worth of UK property each and every hour!
 12 out of 13 homeowners were said to have registered a gain in the value of their property in 2022. The average gain for those 27.4 million homes was £19,000, but there were nearly three million that increased in value by more than £50,000.
Over a quarter of the 2.3 million homes that registered an average fall in value of £7,300 were located in London. Much of this decline came in the second half of the year, as mortgage rate rises put downward pressure on prices. In the final quarter of 2022 there were actually more homes in the UK (15.8 million) that declined in value, compared to those that increased in value (13.9 million).
 One million homes are thought to have now lost all the gains they made in the first two years of the pandemic (whereby values increased an average of £32,400 between February 2020 and February 2022). These are mostly located in London, the South East and Scotland; areas which did not increase in value as much as others during the period.
Nationwide Building Society has since confirmed that house prices declined for a fifth month in a row in January 2023, so this downward trend seems likely to pick up steam as the year goes on.
The research shows how the profile of gains and losses varies across the country and by price band. This highlights how there is not really a singular ‘housing market’ across the country, but many micro-markets, with each home having its own trajectory when it comes to its worth.
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