Correction to last post = "Last time 1989 to 1994 ish"

appologies for any confusion!

You really know you subject Pablo Silver or Lead. I expect you've already made your fortune being able to predict the market?

I like my apocalyses with a date on them, otherwise I don't know if it's meltdown or a squall. While pflusk has been playing Job house prices have got on with their business without him.
Saying 'house prices will go down one day' is neither use nor ornament when they've just done a x3 or x5 jump. I need numbers pflusk, starting with 2003.

Its getting quite bad this housing market is'nt it. 5 months in a row now hometrack have reported drops and I see Nationwide have up'ed the lowest mortgage intrest rate from a 10 to a 25% deposit requirement. So that gives us a bit of an idea of the percentage drop they are expecting. 25% falls in value wow thats massive.

quote:

Originally posted by SplendiferousII:
Its getting quite bad this housing market is'nt it.

Yawn,you’ve been saying the same thing for years, the oldest post kept on record here was this:
06/09/05
“As we all now have access to information on what houses have sold for reasonably recently, via sites such as netproperty etc. It will become clear that house have not achieved anywhere near asking price. People will push this more and more until its no longer 10% under asking price but 15% 20% etc. “

Which must be why you decided to continue to rent when in fact the value of the average property more than doubled.

26/08/05
“I pay £550 per month to rent my house which is a three bed semi in Gloucester. The value of the house is £165K. For me to buy it I would need a £140K mortgage. That would cost me £810 per month. So I save £260 per month and still benifit by living in that house. Ok I'm not buying it and paying off my loan. But the house has been falling in value over the last year. Probably by as much as £500 - £1000 per month. So I am in fact saving as much as £760 - £1260 per month at the moment.”

lol

people love property too much to walk away forever.
People love having a better house than the Jones down the road
These two facts alone coupled with the currently strong yet weaken economy will keep the housing market on track to return positve growth over the next 5 years. In the short term we will see sideways movement at best and a slow but insignificant drop in values less than 5% over the next 18 months is my perdiction. Hardly an apocolypse is it now.

And whats with all the talk of Repossessions I currently have one out of 58 properties. In 1992 I had around 40 out of around 170 properties, let's get it into perspective shall we!
As an investment property is going to outperform just about every commodity over the next 5 to 10 years it will be a rocky road but the fact remains buy for the long term and win. No fast bucks here!

quote:

Originally posted by Baldricksbrother:
Almost everyone accepts house prices will fall at some point, but for the majority of posters on this forum, it matters not one jot because they have got on with their lives regardless.

Do bare in mind, some of the younger generation (and even older) have not had a chance!

I’m very sympathetic to younger people starting off in life and not being able to put a foot on the property ladder and for that reason I think its in all our interest to see house prices come down. I’m unsympathetic to people who could have bought, but decided they’d gamble on a house price crash and then spend the next five years telling us its just around the corner.

Its all relative to where you are!

Brighton (BN) has 2 bed flats starting at 250k thats 10 times local salary.

In Peterborough (PE) they have prices one third of that at £80k for a good 2 bed flat which is 3 times local salary, even huge 4 bed detached can be got for less than 250k, this are has stayed the same for 5 years as so much local development is going on freezing the price.

If you are out-priced perhaps its time to ionsider moving to a cheaper area and getting more for your money. Post code comparison BN1 2JG and PE7 8AT and these are areas comparable in status and social markers.

there are bargains to be had but chose the cheaper area you'll not have to haggle and you'll get a bargain which will rise over the long term as its not been over-inflated by recent rises.

quote:

keep the housing market on track to return positve growth over the next 5 years. In the short term we will see sideways movement at best and a slow but insignificant drop in values less than 5% over the next 18 months

my thoughts exactly on what will happen.

And I fully agree with Mike - if you can't afford it where you are, if you're that desperate to buy, stop lamenting and move like we had to!

With the FSA now stating that the era of cheap loans is over, as banks can’t write loans and sell them on without really checking on the borrower ability to pay. In fact banks are going to have to keep many more loans/mortgages on their own books. It looks like a long overdue return to old fashioned banking/underwriting.

No one really knows what proportion of UK HPI was down to ‘discretionary demand’ created by the easy availability of artificially cheap money, lent by the greedy to in many cases the greedy naïve. But I recon that it puffed prices up way beyond what is sustainable, especially as that support has effectively been withdrawn virtually overnight .

With circa 1.4 million looking to remortgage in a market where the landscape has become and will remain very different from the “2 year fix, rate tart years”, for years to come, the market has well and truly changed.

There appears to be no valid reason for discretionary buyers to buy now as prices are beginning to fall.

I looked at 4 new developments in the Poole, Bournemouth and Southampton and today I can buy property at a genuine 8 to 12% discount than two and a half years ago (from national builders). As I know what is coming downstream at us. I predict with a degree of personnel certainty, that by mid to late 2009 I will be able to get these properties (both new and resale) at a further 10 to 15% discount on the current price. That will be an 18 to 27% lower than many will have chosen to pay, it really is just a getting your timing right in what has been a stretched out cycle. Will I buy at the discounts I’ve quoted? That really depends on the market in 2009, my gut feeling (again looking at the forward indicating data) that by 2010 prices could well be lower still.

I appreciate a lot of people have real trouble contemplating those kinds of falls but that is simply because were are all products of our own environments and experiences.

As I’ve said before sub-pime/bad debt/credit crunch is just getting started and will impact us for years to come.

http://news.hereisthecity.com/news/business_news/7598.cntns

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/...02/27/ccvince127.xml

PS. The property market only moves sideways at the bottom (as sentiment after a crash takes a long time to recover), there is no such thing as bumping along the top.

quote:

Estate agents have more unsold properties on their books than at any time in the past 10 years because of wary buyers, figures show.

People who would otherwise have made an offer on a home are now being much more cautious, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

The news came as statistics showed the number of mortgages advanced for people moving home fell to a new low during January as the credit crunch continued to take its toll on the market.

Just 50,300 home loans were taken out by people moving during the month, the lowest level since the Council of Mortgage Lenders first began to collect data in this format in 2002.

Taken from sky news. 2 points.

1) Chickens. Roost.
2) THere goes the supply and demand argument, blown out of the water like the Bismark.

The thing about "supply and demand" is that "supply" means "money available". It doesn't mean "the number of people that want something".

quote:

about "supply and demand" is that "supply" means "money available". It doesn't mean "the number of people that want something".

Agreed. That is the MAIN reason why the wholesale collapse of the lending markets will lead to a collapse in prices with time. 1 Million UK sellers per annum are forced sellers (not including the repo figures)

Reports about the current housing market are choosing sensationalism over substance. Look at all the facts before making lemming like copycat remarks

True, figures do not lie, and a clear downturn in the housing market has already become evident. But at the same time positive news regarding the housing market is becoming almost like fine print at the bottom of a contract that no one bothers to read.

So, here's what many of the papers failed to mention:

While it may be doom and gloom across England and Wales, if you live in Scotland, you shouldn't get the violins out just yet.

According to RICS, the number of surveyors reporting price rises surged from 7% to 25% this month - an indication that Scotland is the most buoyant market in the UK at the moment.

In addition, sales expectations turned positive for the first time since last June and price expectations improved slightly for the second consecutive month. So although there is a weaker demand for housing at the moment, surveyors are more optimistic about the outlook for the housing market than in recent months, and believe that the pace of price falls will slow down.

It is also worth highlighting that homeowners are adapting to the current economic climate, as they look to get the best value out of their current property.

According to the CML, despite the decline of home loans, there was a rise in remortgaging activity, with 85,000 remortgages in January, up 43% from 59,000 in December.

In addition, more of us are opting for trackers when remortgaging, a sign that more and more of us are expecting further reductions in the Bank of England base rate in 2008. Fixed rate loans represented 57% of loans in January, down from 77% compared to June 2007.

I can counter you all and will continue to do so until I sheepishly retire knowing that the recovery in activity has died
My sales pipeline is now 3x what it was at Christmas!

Houses where i live that used to sell by word of mouth are, and have been, hanging round the market like a bad smell lately, with one seller whose house overlooks a river had to drop the price by 20% to get a sale, wheras last year others in same location had a queue of buyers.
Looks like a rocky road ahead huh?

Penkoprod

quote:

Originally posted by CVRO:
The interesting thing about this whole situation is to see people quoting drops of 20% or 30% on house prices like they were scientific certainties. Some of them even say that they will not buy until prices reach the bottom. Now, how on earth would they ever be sure it was the bottom? Finance professionals or economists don’t get it right 100% of the time. Most researches published by investment banks offer probabilities for different scenarios/outcomes. Yes, there’s a probability house prices will collapse by 20% to 30% (which btw is not exactly great) as there is a probability house prices will go up (again, it’s not exactly great). And we can’t forget that there’s also a probability the research is wrong…

So, I say it again, if you are an investor in properties. Yes, by all means do your research, follow somebody else’s research or just use your intuition, wherever you prefer. But if you are after a home where you believe you will live for a number of years and you find one that you can afford, is fairly priced in your opinion and ticks all the other boxes in your list, you should ask yourself whether you’d rather buy the house now or let this one go in the hope you’ll be able to get it cheaper later on (Weeks, months or years?).

This is the best reply here!