How odd. All the new build properties over £400,000 seem to be struggling to sell locally. Houses that twenty years ago would have been an option to 25 - 34 year olds on a good household income. In fact all properties over £400,000 seem to be on rightmove for an age.
Meanwhile any thing under £275k and prime second time buyer family homes are selling within the week presently.
Who the hell is going to be able to buy a large family home over £400,000 in the north? Wages are weaker. Even if you bought ten years ago, your equity is likely to only be what you've paid into your mortgage (our property has gone up by £15 - 20k at most).
The market in that price bracket for families can only be older than 45, coming into an inheritance or moving up from London having benefited from house price growth.
Even if you have a household income of £60,000 you would struggle to get the required mortgage if like us, you only bought for the first time ten years ago. A typical x3.5 multipler brings you in at £210,000 mortgage. That leaves £190,000 to find in equity. And are you really likely to have anywhere near that if you bought less than ten years ago for the first time?!
I have been banging on about this to local political reps, who have cloth ears and keep blocking every development in the price band thats selling like hot cakes, whilst waving though million pound houses and vast estates above £400k.
Oh and then they moan that too much of the green belt is being built on in order to reach the number of houses they have been told to buy.
Unfortunately until old people start dropping like flies there going to be a property bubble here. The bigger houses wont come down in value, because most selling are for downsizing to help the kids buy, so they will wait, as they cant afford to downsize unless they get enough money. And new builds are likely to stay empty for a long long time.
I'm almost gleeful about the prospect of empty houses given the patronising shit, ive endured over it.
I'm delighted at that report as its the exact argument ive been making anecdotally. I fully intend to bang on about it to the point of being painful at a local community planning discussion this weekend. Everyone else is at least fifteen years older than us. THEY DO NOT GET IT.
The irony is that we aren't in too bad a financial position compared to our peers and those five or so years younger.
My parents still have a good fifteen years or more to go until they hit expected life expectancy. My grandmother is still alive at 92 having burnt through all her equity.
The property crash of 2008, is going to ripple through the system for another twenty years. If we are lucky. It'll probably be longer.
Fantastic report, which states the bleedingly blind obvious to anyone who is trying to buy a small family home or a first time buyer home.
And dont get me started on the ridiculously priced flats spring up all over central manchester.
Ten years from now, Manchester and the surrounding area, will have the exact same problem as London. No one has a plan to prevent it. Not even Labour.