To ask you what's going to happen to house price in the commute towns to London?

[HummingBirddd]

Before anyone says anything, I'm just interested what people think and fully aware that no one knows what's going to happen to the market for sure...
However we are thinking of buying, in St Albans area particularly. Budget is 550-600k that's the absolute top end. We sold our house and moved to St Albans for work and we do like it here... been mapping up the nicer areas and would love to buy and live here for 2-3 years... but obviously with brexit and corona we don't want to end up buying then going into negative equity.
How do you think the past events will affect the market? We are definitely staying in rented until the autumn/end of year but keeping an eye on the market.

nobody knows, but prices don't go up in a recession, so you can wait until there's growth again at least without risking housing getting more expensive.

If you are buying your forever home (or even, the place you want to live in for 5+ years), and you can service the mortgage, negative equity doesn't matter so much.

It wouldn't be our forever home, would plan to move in 2-3 years again, but thanks for the tip. I know it's so unknown what's going to happen to the market, just speculating here really but any comments , advice is very helpful. Also meant to ask if there is anyone who lives in St Albans or near and what their experience is re living here? We only moved here 6 months ago

If it helps, I know that when there was previously an era with a lot of negative equity (early 1990s) I believe that St Albans was not really affected as it has been a desirable place to buy for several decades. You will probably find there it not much for sale for ages until the lockdown is lifted though.