The UK housing market will continue to thrive and boom all the way through to 2026, at which point it will crash. That’s the warning from the man who correctly predicted the housing market crashes of 1990 and 2008.
Fred Harrison is a British author and economic commentator and has developed an 18-year property cycle theory that has, time and again, been shown to correctly predict the ups and downs of the housing market.
Harrison even goes so far as to say that, had the UK government listened to his warnings back in the early 2000s, the 2008 housing crash could have been avoided.
Speaking to This Is Money, he said:
“When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown entered Downing Street in 1997, I wrote to them and others, including Alastair Campbell, to explain they had 10 years in which to prevent house prices peaking in 2007.
“I explained that house prices in the UK would peak in the final quarter of 2007 and that this would be followed by a global depression.
“The 2008 financial crisis could have been avoided, except that Blair’s government failed to heed my warning.”
With his strong track record, Harrison now returns with a new book in which he predicts that the inevitable 2026 crash will ‘eclipse’ that of 2008. For a nation and world that will still be recovering from the aftermath of COVID-19, a crash that is bigger and bolder than that of 2008 could be truly devastating.
Asked what kind of effect COVID and subsequent government intervention into the market will have, Harrison says there are more important, more eternal factors at play.
“What counts is the innate characteristics of the land market, plus our desire for capital gains.
“The driving force is the unique characteristic of land: they ain’t makin’ any more of it and the supply is fixed in the locations where people want to live or work.
“On top of that natural phenomenon is the speculative habit of exploiting this market for additional capital gains.
“Its effects help to elevate prices above what they otherwise would be and will drive the cycle towards the collapse.”
Is there any way to avoid the 2026 crash happening? Sadly not, apparently.
‘Nothing can stop the crash of 2026, other than if prices were limited to long-run affordable levels, but governments refuse to contemplate that prospect.
“If people are happy with the booms and busts, there doesn’t need to be a solution.”
“The best I can do is explain the future so that people can make informed judgements.”
