Property Priced In Gold

UK Money Supply, Gold and House Prices

This chart compares the long-term trends in UK money supply and average UK property prices.

Original figures

The raw figures behind the comparison

UK money supply

Gold price in pounds

Average UK property price

Historical context

UK money supply since 1900

Note: the 1900–2016 and 2017–present sections come from different Bank of England datasets. The line is intentionally broken to avoid implying a seamless statistical series.

The dated markers are included only to help orient the timeline.

Methodology

How the figures were prepared

Money supply

The comparison uses the Bank of England’s M4 series, published under the code LPQAUYN. Each yearly figure is the average of its four quarterly observations.

Gold

Annual gold prices in pounds use the same validated method as PPIG: monthly gold prices in US dollars converted using the average sterling exchange rate for each year.

Property

Property prices come from Nationwide up to 2004 and the UK House Price Index from 2005. The source change is retained and disclosed rather than treated as a seamless series.

Interpretation

Figures are shown in the prices of their time, without adjusting for inflation. These comparisons do not prove cause and effect. Measures that rise over many decades can look closely related even when neither directly caused the other.

Long-run money chart

The 1900–2016 section uses the Bank of England historical composite broad-money series MSBMUKA. Modern M4, LPQAUYN, begins as a separate section in 2017. The line is broken at the boundary because the two datasets are not a single continuous statistical series.

Data availability

The main comparison covers 1968–2025 and uses complete annual observations for all three measures. The displayed values are yearly averages, not end-of-year figures.