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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Do you think Covid-19 will cause a crash in the housing market?

78 replies

Toddlertown · 28/03/2020 20:15

We were viewing properties to buy (first time buyers) prior to this out break. Obviously this is now on hold. There are a few articles I have seen suggesting house prices are going to fall drastically due to a recession after all this is over. Do you think that’s true? Should we hold off?

OP posts:
BubblyBarbara · 01/04/2020 08:04

Think about the 70s when you could buy a house for say £1000 in 1970 and it’d be worth 10x by the end. No one really felt any richer. Prices can do the same this decade. Who will this hurt? People with non inflation linked pensions, people with large cash savings, etc.

clareOclareO · 01/04/2020 08:37

No there won't be a crash in Britain because once the pandemic is over we will still be grossly overpopulated. It's supply and demand. Imagine a terrible case scenario where there are a million deaths. The population would recover this figure in two years or less. There is not going to be a flood of properties on the market and that is the only thing that will cause house prices to dive.

We're all stuck at home at the moment and can't spend. Yes the economy is going to take a hit, but once the restrictions are relaxed it will pick up again. For every job lost, new ones will be created.

If anything, there will be an increase in property values after the pandemic is over. Currently (probably) nobody is starting out on the buying process - they're sitting back and waiting for the virus to be dealt with. When it is, these people will all be hitting the market at once.

Plus, if fewer people are buying their own home, this means more will need to rent. This will stir buy-to-letters into action to exploit the gap, helping property prices stabilise and maybe rise.

To have a crash, we would either need to build several million homes per year (and why would home builders do that? Spend a little for big profits or spend more to make less?) or decimate the population by several million. The latter is unlikely to happen even through "natural" causes like COVID-19, it would take a Third Reich-style mass extermination programme which, under the current regime at least, must be rather unlikely.

mochajoes · 01/04/2020 08:45

One thing that might be beneficial is that as more companies see that remote working is practical & efficient there won't be such a need for so many people to commute into London & other big cities to giant office blocks.

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