Does anyone think there is a recession around the corner?

[dinny]

And the housing market is about to go tits-up?

utility and fuel costs are soooo high too.

whereabouts (ish) do you live, NDP and Jampots? actually, dh has just bought a flat in London - still good value to be found in certain places.

I'm South-West/West Mids border

are many of you who've posted living in the house you see your family staying in for the next 20 years kind if thing?

Well many other parts of the (Western) world have been in recession for a while. I don't think house prices will fall until a recession really kicks in - more redundancies, higher interest rates, etc.

DId you see today that something like 2 million people owe £10K plus on credit cards and loans etc?

yes, Mercy - that's what got me thinking, really.

huge debt has become normal for so many people.

Crazy, isn't it, Lockets? (utilities) Our gas bills have been HUGE in this big place.

huge debt HAS become normality yes, but if utlities continue to rise (which I think they will) then people can't balance the books forever, can they?

Fortunately, we owe £900 only and rent abhouse that is not linked to any mortgage (an inheritance) but i'd be worried otherwise. We were casualties before of borrowing / income dropping and I'd never risk it again.

no I don't. Think around here the property price downturn has already happened (over the past 18 months or so) and levelled for the time being. We're not finding that our fuel bills have yet risen that much tbh. Agree debt is becoming out of control but that may well take several more years to catch up with the individuals concerned.

thing is, recession doesn't just affect house prices. the biggest impact it usually has is high unemployment levels. it's no good having cheap houses to buy when you've been made redundant and can't get another job.

no, thanks. i'll take high house prices and just keep renting.

Dinny - yes we are in the house we will stay in for a good 20 years (hopefully). Mortgage is less than 2/3 current value and we don't have any other debt either, so we are not in too much of a risky position.

there's nothing to indicate a recession around the corner, yes the housing market may steady or even correct itself but a recession is much bigger than housing. the stock market is a reasonably reliable predictor of our economic outlook and at the moment is doing very well. also borrowing may be higher but interest rates are relatively low so debt is manageable.

Recession; No.
I do think some areas are going to see localised recessions, probably the remaining manufacturing areas will suffer here, job losses then house prices. The grey pound will probably keep UK PLC going for some years to come..

Expat, we're renting too (have sold to rent) - we are renting our house for about £500 less a month than it would cost to buy.

I have some friends that waited for 4 years for the prices to fall, the only thing they got was the oportunity of living in rented accomodation for the rest of their lives, as they can not afford even to get in the property ladder with the current prices.

I think the rise is slowing down though, we live in a small city where TBH we don't have the banking/high flyer executive business types but the property prices have gone up to some ridiculous prices that are OK for more business oriented areas but not here, the result has been that the most expensive houses remain in the market for A G E S, most of them are never sold and then are refurbished into several "apartments" and sold at barely affordable prices, although very overpriced for what they are. I belioeve the only prices that are going up and selling are those at the lower end of the scale.

The 'universal truth' that renting always equals throwing money away compared to buying is absolutely not always true if you actually work out the maths, and especially at the moment where in many areas rent payments are substantially lower than having a mortgage (where you don't even start to pay off the actual debt for years). This idea that by not jumping on the bandwagon you are condemning yourself to a life of slavery to landlords is a very old scare tactic put about by estate agents, lenders, chartered surveyors etc (and now even some of them are backtrackging), who, incidentally, are currently also the only organisations predicting a continuing rise in the housing market.

A friend of ours who does something incomprehensible to do with predicting markets has recently sold his £1.2 million house... to rent. Simply a good business move, he reckons.

Yes, it's already started

What did old Randy tell ya last year?

If there is a recession i reckon it will be due 2 high energy prices, I fear theyare only starting to ripple thru world economy, and the only direction is up.

\link{http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=28150\we've been linked}

Someone go and give em hell!

i agree, 2labs. there's so much more to purchasing a property than a mortgage. there's also upkeep. i don't see paying rent just now as throwing money away b/c a lot of the housing stock here is in poor repair. owning it would cost a lot more than just the mortgage.

when i owned a home, i had a REALLY good job, so did my ex husband. so we were able to save funds for a 'repair and maintenance account'.

couldn't do that now, therefore buying would be a very risky proposition in my present situation.

no, thanks.

exactly, Expat - there has been so much maintenance on our rented place since we moved in and I breathe a sigh of relief it's not coming out of our pocket.

I don't think so, employment levels are high. There are so many different mortgages available to help people get on the ladder. Labour still have their term running for some time so there will be no imminent change of government.

We are in East Herts, there has been very little coming on the market in this area for the last 10 months. My Mum has been looking at spending 250-300 with not much success.

Joolstoo - it's all fun on that site, isn't it!!