Can the last poor* person to leave London please take their kids with them.

[fakenamefornow]

WTAF is going on with house prices? I want to move to London but it seems impossible.

I think Surrey's going to be next to remove all traces of the poor.

• By poor I mean anyone on average income or below, so actually, just not rich.

Home not homebuyer

well, you could just not buy alcohol! I can't afford it. Of course buy it if you want to, but it is a strange thing to hold up as an example of unavoidable expense!

London house prices are falling! Ooo maybe that £800k 2 bed terrace will shortly be within my grasp at £600k!

Where did I put all my bunting and my marching band?

Falling from super duper insanely out of (almost) everyone's reach to just insanely out of (almost) everyone's reach is not much comfort really.

Urm -1% of £800,000 is £796,000 keep saving those pennies!!

(I know you would know that, just pointing out that the fall is very very relative, the media just love headlines)

sorry typo on the £796 but you know what I meant!

DamnBamboo - yes prices have been very high for a decade, but prices have risen very sharply in the last 3 years or so. £400k for a 1 bed conversion inn Stockwell? £900k for a 4 bed semi in Streatham?

Lawn - a quarter of a million for a flat ON Stanstead rd? Stanstead rd is a nightmare! It might have the odd leaf but it is a permanent traffic jam.

Jesus Shevel in my glorious shitpit town ours is half of that and we have tourist prices.

I think a lot of cities are pricing out a lot of people, Taunton, Bristol, Exeter and even Plymouth are out of our reach for a typically sized house now. Ridiculous.

1% drop in London is like a drop of rain in the sea- it makes no difference.

1% in 4 weeks is a pretty sharp drop, actually, and that is across London, with some areas seeing a 5% decrease in the same period of time.

Luggage, prices would have to drop by at least 70% to make London property remotely affordable, even for the relatively affluent.

This is excellent news. At blimmin last. It's the talks of interest rate rises from our Canadian friend that must be giving everyone the jitters.

Spero, it isn't so bad in many places, it depends where you look and what you are looking for. If your are prepared to compromise on a few aspects, there are some fairy cheap properties around.

But even so, hope they will soon be cheaper.

I just did the 'put the price of your non London house into a London borough on rightmove' thing and swapped a four bed semi with garden in Stockport for a studio flat (basically one not very big room with bed next to cooker) with tiny bathroom in Notting Hill!

Bonkers conkers

I've just been looking at rooms to rent for a trip to paris on Air bnb. They also seem to have a very dense population, with most people living in shared flats, mostly tiny, letting rooms out to make ends meet. I fear there will be many more studios with bed next to cooker type places evolving in the future. I suspect they are going to trash the planning laws in the very near future.

I wouldn't live in London unless I was no further out than zone 2 because of the transport issues and costs.

I don't think there is anywhere is zones 1 or 2 I could now afford to buy, and I am a higher rate tax payer.

What will happen is that prices will go down slightly, interest rates will rise, there will be talk of a crash, people will stop moving (BIL is planning a move out of London at the moment but he's only moving to cash in and already said if he can't sell he'll just stay), available stock will go down again, the crash won't be dramatic enough to really change affordability, confidence will slowly return and prices will start to rise again.

We moved out in 2005 because everyone was saying the bubble can't last (that was before the surge in 2006) thought we'd get out while the going was good, even though we didn't want to leave. Sold flat for £295, now worth in the region of £675,000.

I dont get it when people say that unless you live centrally, its not worth living in London!

I live in Zone 4, leafy suburb. Its 20 mins on the tube to Kings Cross. I can be in the west End or City in half an hour. Quicker and cheaper than commuting from out of London.

Genuine question - the places that some of you have described as "shitholes" or "stabsville" seem to have gone up so much that you can now get something in a "nice" area for the same price or less eg....

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-46581407.html

(Hope the link works, I've not done one before!)

......compared with the modern two bed in Brixton for £750k linked earlier in the thread.

Do people put such a premium now on being closer to town?

Agree with donteatthehedgehogs. I can see that happening.

We sold a modest terrace in East London at the height of the boom (2007) for 600k - 75k above our asking price. Its on the market for just under a million at the moment, I see. Prices in that area didnt fall, just not much was on in 2008/9. I can see that happening again.

Beingfrank - there are different types of buyer. I think thats the thing.

Brixton, Hackney etc are attractive to affluent young buyers, professional couples etc. Those areas might be quite 'gritty' but they're no longer 'shitholes'. Brixton is full of nightlife and on a fast tube line into the centre, so youngsters flock there, and property prices are pushed up because of demand.

Whereas families might prefer an area further out, with more space, in less of a happening area or with a trainline but no tube etc.

My area is a Zone 4 suburb, on the tube, leafy but not posh. Cheapest one bed flat would be 25k, a 3 bed house around 500-600k, nice 4 bed semi upwards of 750k. So def cheaper than Brixton, but not cheap! And more attractive to families than a young couple both working in The City, for example.

*350k for a one bed not 25k

250k even...gah

Then again you don't need prices to drop a lot, you need them to drop consistantly so people start to think about prices falling or at least levelling off. No one wants to be the last person to overpay on a house, so ifyouve heard for 2-3 months about houseprices falling, you put in a cheeky low offer, or you hold off buying for a while to see, no need to rush, let's see if this lowers. Sellers start to think they should accept cheeky low offers because they've had no others, and house prices continue to fall.

It's the house price rises in opposite, prices aren't rising because people want to pay £200k more for the same property, they rise because people believe that's a reasonable price to pay because "house prices are rising in London", and if they don't buy that now, they'll have to pay £50k more next year. You know the roundabout is going faster than you want, but it's going to get faster, so jump on now! However, if enough people start to think 'if I wait, the roundabout will slow down' it will.

House prices are about supply and demand, but the level of demand is driven by what people can afford to borrow and what they are prepared to pay.

Mary yes, and one that is driven by personal reactions as you say. It's one big group think.

It's interesting the down and up drivers are so strong and they snowball in either direction.