Will house prices ever come down?

[Summerdressandjellyshoes]

What do you think will happen with house prices.

I think the prices at the moment are completely crazy. They've been crazy for years but they are now beyond belief.

I love looking at house for sale and I was having a look at my parents old road where I grew up. It is quite a rough council estate and houses are up for sale now for 250k for an ex council small 3 bed terrace with no parking on quite frankly a not very nice road.

We live on a nice enough road I'm very grateful to live here, but it's not fancy by any means, yet 3 bed semis are selling for £385-£400k.

Prices seem to have risen sharply in the last 10-15 years.
Surely it can't go on like this.

Nope. They’ve been coming down for months lol. People aren’t buying unless they get a good deal because they need to make the numbers work with these high interest rates and wages not rising despite higher living costs. A lot of people in england in particular will have to pay more council tax from next year too, I’m sure many councils will declare bankruptcy and it will be widespread. They will scrounge that money off the public like always. Not sure what you’re talking about, prices are defo coming down, albeit slowly at first . Detached houses in particular arent selling well at all. New developments are slowly becoming bankrupt. I’ve made offers in the past few months, they were lower ball offers, but vendors took the higher offer only to have their EA call me a few months later asking if I’m still interested ( i wasnt) because the other “buyer” can’t afford the mortgage and cant scrape more for a deposit. The problem you’re seeing is stubborn sellers keeping prices higher than people can afford and that’s the crash that will happen: unrealistic prices will be reset to reflect the actual economical times. Sure, some older people will hold onto their homes, but it doesn’t matter. If people cant afford the home in the first place , esp first time buyers who make the market run, then the only thing that can change this is if price comes down since interest wont come down for many many years. This is just the beginning of a slow burn for sellers. Some are “waiting” for it to get better to sell their houses for more in a year or two - they actually think the interest rates will go down (they won’t). So they will never be able to get the high prices they are desperate for. More and more people will not be able to afford homes at sellers’ stubbornly inflated prices. But these sellers can keep on waiting - it will hurt them more in the long run. They value of all homes is depreciating from now on until it reaches a level people can afford comfortably. Even people i know who earn well (£100k+) are struggling with expenses. They think these high interest rates will only last til next year. Nope. This will go on for YEARS, probably a decade. Imagine when more and more people realise majority of their income will be spent on their mortgage for the next few years while their pay stays the same or reduces because they bought an expensive house when money was cheap. It’s not sustainable for a lot of people. If anyone thinks these rates and this situation will last only a year or two, they are mad and ignoring the red flags to make themselves feel better.

@MintJulia you are one of the few on all the housing threads to comment on the situation of single person households. It was around 10% in the 1970’s and has risen to close to 30% and it’s not just because of people living alone in old age it’s an entire societal shift of social attitudes.

House prices are bonkers

Mine just keeps going up and up and it's just a standard 3 bed

No, house prices are on the slide now in most areas, maybe you missed this? It's been reported in the official figures.

It's not just a simple question of not enough houses to go round. So many (most?) house are bought with credit (mortgages). If interest rates are high and also the cost of living keeps going up (all other bills like energy, food, fuel etc) then potential house buyers become simply unable to afford the huge mortgages to prop up high property prices. In addition lenders are more cautious about how much they'll lend you, as the economic outlook is uncertain. Something has to give.

Prices are coming down, but not dramatically and not universally. We haven't seen anything close to a sustained drop in the market as a whole, and there has certainly been no positive change in actual affordability. We're several generations away from pressures of demand easing and prices falling significantly imo.

The people who will lose the most are buyers now or remortgagers who bought expensive houses. People THINK these high interest rates will last only another year or two. Nope, this is the new normal for a decade at the least. If you are buying an expensive house NOW that maxes your budget or you already bought one in the last couple of years with cheap money that’s NOW costing you lots more, you are the ones who will have the hardest time. A decade of cheap money followed by a decade of high interest rates in the trend now. The bank of england want this to happen. They want people to stop spending. Rich people want the housing market to crash to buy in. This is how boom and bust cycles work.