Remortgage is maintaining its top spot within the UK housing market as many other sectors continue to trudge up the recovery hill and rebound. The Brexit vote of last June challenged some sectors within the market and made normal activity levels quite difficult to uphold. Many experts still describe the market future as uncertain and struggle to make accurate forecasts. This is all happening just days before Article 50 will possibly be triggered.

Entering the month of January for many close to the UK housing market meant experiencing a market full of uncertainty and possibly falling short on many economic forecasts. That ended up being the case with many sectors within the housing market, but one continued its strong run – remortgage. Figures from the CML indicate the month of January was especially strong for remortgage activity. Month on month compared with December, January posted an increase of 54% in remortgage value and 46% in volume.

One area of the UK housing market which is rebounding in quite a strong way is house prices. London in particular is showing up now with new figures suggesting the high values of capital city properties are once again moving upward. During the month of January, UK house prices increased at their fastest pace in one year, rising 0.6% and with it increasing the average to almost £298,000, according to data from Acadata and LSL.

Annual rents across the UK are falling after years of consistent increases. For the first time in six years, rents this year will fall and provide relief for millions who rent property and call those residences “home.” According to Countrywide, rents this year will be lower because of several reasons. Tenant demand has been dropping for some time now and London has been more of an example of this than any.

Uncertainty within the UK housing market is still harboring all the attention as inflation is on the rise, but not enough to push the Monetary Policy Committee to increase the base rate in their monthly meeting this coming week. The Central Bank appears unanimously in favour of holding interest rates at the current low rate of 0.25%. This will be transpiring as Article 50 could be triggered as early as Tuesday.

Falling property sales across the country as well as in the capital city of London has led to painful erosion in the amount of profit for Countrywide, UK’s biggest estate agency chain. Countrywide saw pre-tax profit fall from more than £47m in the year 2015, to less than £20m last year. This points directly to a slowdown in the housing market and concern for other estate agencies as well.