The property market looks like its going to collapse and that's a good thing

[Ellreejeee]

Surely this madness is going to end soon and it will benefit the country?

Shed for sale in Somerset in someone back garden for 150k. Look at the pictures www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-37137567.html

London is insane, most overvalued many are saying www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34676643

The average london house has earnt 2 pounds an hour for the last decade. And that's tax free if its your own home!

I would have thought you would have to be living in Northampton, the wilds of the Cotswolds or Birmingham to get to a 90 minute journey.

You might not be saying that you have to live in Zone 2 but you are inferring that the alternative is a 90 minute journey. Sometimes you can get places quicker coming from outside London than trying to commute from different areas of London.

Why is SD such a killer. As I have said before a flat I bought 2 years ago in a very nice location, 1 bedder, close to transport + 30 ft private garden 10 minutes from Tottenham Court Rd was under the SD threshold. Ideal for a FTB but I bought it and when I sold it again FTBs looked at it and nit picked about room sizes, and messed me about. It was sold with pp to extend, to a BTL

SD is still free on anything under £125000 and only 2% up to £975000. Then it leaps to 5%.

it's hard to conceive of a door to door commute from anywhere of 25 minutes unless you literally live on top of a station and your work/study is on top of a station.

I said an hour to 90 minutes. My commute from my zone two flat was an hour door to door and worse when the DLR/Jubilee line fell over. It is a little longer from my new house in zone 5.

Unless you work in Euston station and live in New Street station you aren't going to commute between London and Birmingham in 90 minutes.

If stamp duty is 2% to £975,000 then I want a considerable amount of money back!

Stamp duty rates reduced after my daughters bought, for properties up to about £1m and increased hugely to the new upper band of 12% since then.#

Scotland has its own regime now too for stamp duty which is different from England.

5 mins to the Jubilee line and then a quick change onto the Metropolitan, a mere 6 stops in total, then a 5 min walk the other end and we don't live in London. or the other way we have the Thameslink straight into Kings X then the next stop is Farringdon.

If you are living outside of London it sometimes is quicker to get in to work than living in a London postcode that is nearish work.

Apologies I do not deal in hugely expensive property so hadn't actually looked at the implications on the new SD thresholds and misread the amounts. I never deal in property over £250000. That is my cut off point that is why I am surprised when people tell me that flats are £350/£400k and they need a £100k deposit. Atm I am looking at a 1 bedder for under £100k.

where are these

How did they get planning for that?

I'm going to suggest it to my mum. She has 75 foot of garden that she wants to get rid of with separate access.

The trouble with buying in a grotty area of London-which may or may not 'come up' -is that it isn't necessarily particularly safe to live in ..A consideration if you are a young woman living alone and reliant on public transport ,as is my DD1.Hence our heavily subsidising her first purchase .And she is well aware she is fortunate we can do so .A friends daughter and partner have been looking at St Albans(mentioned up thread) -they currently rent in Brixton but can't afford to buy there-but I think have ruled out as too ecoensive even on two incomes and are now looking at Hitchen .I have a friend who lives there and it takes her nearly as long to get into London as it does me and I live in the W Midlands .

www.galliardhomes.com/Trinity-Square

Are these really going to keep rising in value and be a " step on ladder" ? Surely there is a cap on a studio in Hounslow. ... are people buying thinking they will sell for 300k in 2 or 3 years ?

They look reall nice and shows that a full time working couple on two professional salaries can still buy in London. If they cost about £200k then they need about £10k deposit each which is not impossible to save if you stop going on holidays and eating out which most of those of us who bought have suffered.

post
That is absolute horsehit
London isn't some lawless ghetto outside zone 2.
While there are of course a few estates you probably don't want to walk around waving a MacBook or wedge of used twenties, it is nonsense to think it isn't safe to walk back from the tube

I'd far sooner walk back from the tube through busy streets than be the last person on a commuter train to the sticks where I disembark onto a deserted platform with no taxis or staff.

But they teeny tiny deo. Like a hotel room. For a couple gives no space.

Thing is you can't compare my parents paid XX in the 70s cos that's getting on to 40 years ago.

Everything can change in a day, never mind a year.

I agree it's all shit tho.

I think anyone would be really lucky as their first place to live in those new flats on the link! Is that the difference between those who manage to buy (we make massive compromises early on) and those who always rent?

The issue with house prices in London is starting to increase house prices in the SW. My local area was advertised in a national paper recently as an up and coming investment area for BLT because it has good rail links with paddington. 2hrs to center of London. "An easy commutable distance!".

I live in the east mids
Been in this house for 4 years.
Apparently it's gone up in value by 53k since then.
Ok...we have made improvements buy nothing that would warrant that rise.
Insane.

There is a real possibility of a crash in an inflated market. All it takes is an economic reverse and loss of confidence and we"re all in negative equity. Your rising house price does you no good unless you're planning on downsizing.

Rather than puncture the bubble it could be deflated slowly by building more houses. Trouble is that the way planning permission works and with the big house builders land banking and building 10 houses, selling them and then building another 10 then house prices won't stabilise. Drip feeding the houses on to the market will inflate houses.

Change the legislation so that planning permission is time limited and the developer will only be allowed one application per site so that they are forced to build all the houses all at the same time and that may help. Alternatively, set up a not for profit building company and set them a target of building a 100,000 cheap three bedroom semis in a year and watch the builders scream.

In order to find the space for these houses, pull the planning permission from any sites that have been land banked. In rural areas, add 10% to the size of the village area. The not for profit company builds the house and specifies the houses are only to be sold to key workers or people with a proven local connection with the proviso that if the house is to be sold on then it can only be sold back to the company that built it at a specified rate.

Of course building more council houses is a great idea but this time don't sell them off ridiculously cheaply.

I get annoyed when I see on these threads that if only people didn't have mobile phones or Sky TV then they could afford to buy. We sold our first flat in east London for £190k. 18 months later and the area is suddenly hot it's on right move for 300k. The people who bought our flat were teachers I doubt they would be able to buy at the 300k price

Oliversmummy FTBs need to realise that when you start out if you cannot afford your dream 2 bed flat in zone 1,2 or 3 then you have to travel and live in an area you can afford. Quick look on Rightmove and after discounting studios, over 60s living, auctions and shared ownership then there are 1 bed flats for sale at around £140000

I've been messed around by unrealistic FTBs when selling too. They will complain about, for example, small room sizes when its a bedroom 10 feet x 9 feet or something. Sorry, but that's perfectly doable. Or a "too small" kitchen. A friend of mine has just pulled out of a bargain buy because a small spot of wet rot has been flagged up by the survey. Specialist survey recommended treatment for £2500 and buyer was happy to reduce price and lender still happy to lend with a retention. She could cover the £2500 but has pulled out because she is alarmed by the words "wet rot". This is the third property she has pulled out of and she has been looking for over 2 years. She won't buy a new build because, you've guessed it, the room sizes are too small.

My ftb was in Forrest Hill. One bed with a mauve bathroom suite. Friends have ftbs in Catford and Brixton. So what?

I also wonder what people think happens in other countries. Most of Europe suffers from depopulation outside the cities. Drive around France for example, and even 30km out of Paris is like a wasteland, full of abandoned houses and soulless single street villages with buldings covered in graffiti that in Sussex or Surrey a similar distance out of London would have families living in them. Most European countries suffer the same problems. In Denmark, rural depopulation is a massive problem, because all young people want to live in or around Copenhagen, in a poky overpriced rental apartment, as opposed to a Jutland farmhouse. Live in Sweden and you will be lucky to find a large rental apartment in a large town to stay in with your family, it might take years on a waiting list for a good one to come up. In parts of Germany, even rather nice parts, you can buy apartments for £15,000, because no-one wants to live there!

Lots of Europeans rent a small apartment and then buy a family home somewhere much cheaper and rural. Eastern Europe outside the cities - great if you want to live the lifestyle of a rural peasant, living off the land and supplementing your income with selling some handcrafts/hired labour work/tourism. But the UK is a much more successful economy than any of those, so its more expensive. We do have freedom of movement throughout the EU, so if you don't want to work or live in it, whats stopping you? Our ancestors mostly emigrated from abroad before the ease of modern travel!

Yes, you cope with what you can. My daughter bought ex local authority. YOu just do whatever you can to buy as young as you can even if it's a dire place. I suspect it;s seeing perfect homes on TV that causes part of the problem although I don't deny high house prices are a major issue as they were 30 years when my children's father's school had to offer school accommodation as no teachers (unless they were married to me) could afford a local flat or house in zone 5. That was 30 years ago. He sold in the North and the smaller propery in the south in zone 5 30 years ago cost about 4x what the house in the North had cost!

My parents' house int he NE has gone up9% over the last 5 years. I bet it hasn't even reached pre 2008/9 crash levels yet. The SE is a very regional market at present which is different from the position people face in other parts of the country. I am not saying it is easy at all but you might need to buy that £200k Hounslow small flat on the link above and perhaps sleep on your parents' floors for 4 years whilst you let it out until you can afford to mvoe into it. That is the kind of thing those of us who owned chose tosuffer. I call it the "jam tomorrow" way of living - things hard today for the greater prize later. People who are made like that tend to do better in life. That does not mean I am saying a minimum wage cleaner working full time with no qualifications is going to be able to save £10k for a flat deposit.

You can't postpone life just to get on the property ladder. It must be grim living with parents when you are in your 30's. It is much harder to buy especially in London for this generation. I'm a scientist on average sort of income and I have colleagues with big family houses in Clapham and Fulham. They bought 20 years ago when a mid-earning couple could afford in those areas. Now the houses are worth 2-3 million and only bankers on very big salaries can afford them

But baking as I have said too many times, Fulham 20 years ago wasn't a very nice area.
Two average salaries could afford a house there because bankers didn't want to live there.
Today, two average salaries buy in Catford or Lewisham or Leyton or any of the other areas that are affordable but don't have a Waitrose.

Cestlavie Stanmore to Wembley park is 10 mins then a quick dash across the platform to the Metropolitan Line and it is 2 stops into Baker Street which is a 10min walk There is a real possibility of a crash in an inflated market.

All it takes is an economic reverse and loss of confidence and we"re all in negative equity

Not everyone would be in negative equity. Remember NE only becomes NE if you come to sell.

Change the legislation so that planning permission is time limited

It already is.

the developer will only be allowed one application per site so that they are forced to build all the houses all at the same time and that may help

Only if the developer has the money to build all the houses at the same time otherwise what happens if he doesn't. Does that mean the land can never be built on or just not be built on by that company. If the latter what is to stop the land being transferred into a different company name, and the houses built or the land just left and then transferred again.

Alternatively, set up a not for profit building company and set them a target of building a 100,000 cheap three bedroom semis in a year and watch the builders scream.

Why would they be screaming? They would probably be the ones the government employ to build the houses.

In order to find the space for these houses, pull the planning permission from any sites that have been land banked. In rural areas, add 10% to the size of the village area.

The biggest problem is not with village areas it is with specifically the London property market.

The not for profit company builds the house and specifies the houses are only to be sold to key workers or people with a proven local connection with the proviso that if the house is to be sold on then it can only be sold back to the company that built it at a specified rate

So you are going to keep the company buying all these "cheap fields" around villages a secret. The person who owns the land, and saw that a particular company was trying to buy their land was one that was going to build huge numbers of houses on what is Green Belt would be either putting the price up or refusing to sell. Remember the land is owned by people who in most probability live close by and don't want a housing estate going up in their back gardens.

Of course building more council houses is a great idea but this time don't sell them off ridiculously cheaply

Or Councils could just put a stop on selling anymore council houses

Sorry but this type of un thought through "lets build more houses in useless locations" type of post does no one any good.

Sorry such a long post couldn't correct
Cestlavie Stanmore to Wembley park is 10 mins then a quick dash across the platform to the Metropolitan Line and it is 2 stops into Baker Street which is a 10min walk to Oxford Street