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Property pressure pushes engagement up (w.e. October 2)

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Our Property content was propelled to the top of our engagement charts last week as the housing market felt the aftershock of the Government’s mini-budget.

With interest rates forecast to hit 6% next year, lenders cancelled thousands of home financing products as homeowners with mortgages and first-time buyers scrambled to secure a lower borrowing rate. As such, engagement with related content grew significantly.

Property pressure pushes engagement up

  • A jeopardous week for the UK economy following the Government’s ‘mini-budget’ piled the pressure on consumers, including homeowners with mortgages and buyers looking to finance a first-time property purchase, as borrowing rates grew dramatically and lenders removed thousands of products from the market. Engagement with our Property content increased significantly by +35% to 7.3m weekly page views.

  • With financial markets so rattled by the Government’s growth plan, and Bank of England intervention needed to stabilise them, engagement with our Business & Finance content grew to 45m weekly page views; the second highest ever recorded by the category. Elsewhere, 21.4m Personal Finance page views hit a record high for the content as consumers turned to our publishers for trusted information.

  • With the housing market and consumers so directly affected by last week’s economic turmoil, engagement with the Home Financing topic within our Personal Finance content increased by almost 3.5 times week on week.

  • The 35% growth for our Property content was driven and matched by the same rate of growth for the Buying & Selling topics within the category, as forecasts about the affordability of mortgages and a 10% drop in house prices next year were made.

  • The housing market was not isolated in its impact from the economy’s wobble. Pension funds also looked to be in jeopardy before the Bank of England intervened. Engagement with our Retirement Planning content also grew significantly by +82% week on week.

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  • Cost of living has been as synonymous with 2022 as Covid had been with the two years before it. As the  dominant  issue for Brits nationwide, we have seen the huge growth in engagement with related content areas continue as the year has progressed and consumers have turned to our trusted publishers for clarity.

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