It's Coming Home For The Property Market

In anticipation of England’s semi-final game against Denmark tonight, we explore how England's tournament success may impact house prices across the country.  According to research from Yes Homebuyers, there is a correlation between how well England performed in the last seven football tournaments - particularly the Euros - and how well the housing market performs directly after in the following year. 

2008 was the only year in the past seven tournaments in which we failed to qualify for the Euros, and house prices fell by a whopping 12%. This year was a little unusual due to the credit crunch and this likely had a greater impact on housing prices than football did, but it still correlates with the pattern. 

Since Sweden hosted the Euros in 1992, England has failed to progress from the group stages on two occasions, 1992 and 2000. We also failed to get past the last 16 in 2016. Following these underwhelming performances, house prices across the country grew at an average of just 4% in the following year.

When England reach the quarter and semi finals, things begin to amp up slightly. In both 2004 and 2012 when we reached the quarter finals, house prices rose by an average of 4.5%, a slight improvement on the years we only reached the group stages. However, in 1996 where we reached the semi finals, house prices boomed, rising a whopping 9% in the following year. 

While these links may seem tenuous, and you may be thinking: “how on earth does football have anything to do with property?”, substantial football wins do tend to have a marked impact on the economy. According to the Center for Retail Research (CRR), an extra £1 billion in spending took place in the English economy when England made it to the semifinals during the 2018 World Cup. And, when Leicester City won the Premier League in 2015 against 5,000-to-1 odds, this was enough to boost local economic activity by over £140 million, which supported over 2,500 jobs, a later study revealed.

Matthew Cooper from Yes Homebuyers explains:

"We’re a football-supporting nation; it puts a spring in our step when the team do well. And we know that the economy is based on sentiment – we see it time and time again with things like consumer spending. When people feel good, when they feel optimistic, they spend more. It’s the same with the housing market – a lot of it is about sentiment, and that “feel good factor” we get from a great tournament might be having an impact on our housing market. We’re just looking at the data, and the data’s telling us that it seems to help."

That being said, in these uncertain times we may see less economic impact relative to our success than in previous tournaments. This is because many of the factors that would boost economy during a successful football tournament, for example tourism, are still heavily restricted until our "Freedom Day" on 19th July.