UK money supply
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The property figures come from one source up to 2004 and another from 2005. See Methodology for details.
Original figures
The same measures in pounds
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.