In the summer of 2020, when British society emerged from months of Covid lockdown, the UK housing market reopened and began booming, amid fierce demand for larger homes as buyers sought more space, better home working environments or a garden.
Fuelled by ultra-low interest rates and then-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty holiday, the numbers of homeowners moving to new properties began to rise sharply from June 2020, and by August mortgage approvals had jumped to their highest level since October 2007.
