House prices are falling for the super-rich – but that’s no use for the rest of us | Arwa Mahdawi

With a baby on the way, my partner and I need a bigger place. But despite all the talk of coronavirus killing' the city, ordinary homes have never been less affordable

Hello? I would like to speak to the manager of the pandemic please. I was promised cheap real estate, goddammit. I was told Covid had killed cities and nobody wanted to live in them any more. I was told urban property prices would plummet. Well, it sure seems like someone forgot to tell house prices. Last time I checked - and I check multiple times a day - major cities are still majorly unaffordable.

To be fair, prices have fallen in New York's ultra-luxury market. But do I care if an apartment that once cost $20m now costs $17m? No - this information is irrelevant to my lifestyle. Rents have also dropped from extremely exorbitant to just exorbitant. But every time I Google house prices", I am greeted with headlines such as house prices hit record highs". The price of an average house in London, for example, is almost 10% higher than this time last year and has just topped 500,000 for the first time.