I know this has been done recently but can we have another poll on what you all think is going to happen to house prices?

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I'm wondering if the boom is over and whether it might be worth hanging on another 6 months before buying (or 12 months) based on:

this forecast of house price freeze from Ernst & Young ITEM Club, the leading forecasting group

• quite a few houses locally have NEW PRICE, i.e. reductions

• Developers are offering to pay stamp duty, move in with £0 etc deals which suggests they want to shift property fast (I know they always do but it hasn't always been this way)

• Estate agents are actively sending me details, didn't used to happen, you used to have to chase them and beg to be shown places before they went on the market.

What do you all think? Add potential problems with the US sub prime market, interest rate rises, people coming to the end of fixed rates, record levels of personal debt etc etc, could we get a bargain if we waited do you think?

Or am I just so hoping for a buyer's market that I am living in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

All views welcome.

hmm - well the number of repossessions has apparently risen recently - which means more homes being sold cheaply at auction etc.....so in theory I think they could fall don't know ow much but possibly........but then I'm no expert...

We've got no intentions of moving from here for a LONG time so we'll just tight if they do.

dunno. will watch with interest

I think it affects certain price bands more than others. If you are a buyer you might be cautious and want to limit your budget a bit mroe and force yourself below a Stamp Duty ceiling, so round here property £550k+ is stuck on the market longer term. Not yet seeing significant reductions tbh even among those on the market for 6 months +. Good proeprty will still sell before it even hits the internet .

Developers paying Stamp Duty as an incentive has been going on round here for eons on and off, depends on the scale of the development I suspect. Most likely to get an early phase occupied to release cash for next or with the last few on a development so they an move on. Danger is it puts an artificial ceiling on resale values for a while afterwards.

we've been in our house 2 years and the prices haven't moved that much in that time, not in my area anyway (near Stockport). I think house prices may fall slightly, but I doubt there will be a crash any time soon tbh. We've just remortgaged onto a fixed rate and we didn't get a bad deal (5.4%) - we'd have been struggling on SVR! We couldn't pay our mortgage and bills on one wage anymore, which we could have in our old house. The upper end of the market (300k plus) is definitely slow round here. In fact I think the whole market is fairly slow, but there's a lot of property on - maybe due to the rush before the HIPP comes in? There's quite a few 'reduced' prices but they haven't come down by much.

oh and typically the market slows between July and September then again November to February which might be why you are seeing reductions and receiving details now , EAs have to work a bit harder !

well we have just had an offer on our house, (only been on 4 weeks)but we are thinking about not buying for another 6 months or so..

DH thinks the prices will drop as he thinks there will be more increases in interest charges during the next 12 months.

and also that it is best to sell int he summer (higher prices) and buy in the winter (cheaper prices)..

But have agreed that should a house that we both love be available now we may go for it at a lower price and see what happends..

Never sure that there is a right time to get on the market for the first time, as you can't wait for ever...

the headline in the shite free london press yesterday was that they were going to go up 40% (don't know over what time frame sorry)

(sorry that is the trend, in short term they may of course be a dip)

here you go

there will be a revolution and houses will be provided free by the government.

More and more families will emigrate so they don't have to live crammed on top of each other in over-priced housing.

yes senora
that used to happen until thatcher thatcher milk snatcher flogged all the council houses

Appreciation will level off but continue to rise by 7-10 per cent per annum. which is more or less what that article said.
Micro markets behave differently though. It is worth while really examining the area where you want to buy. Have a look at the local house price index. Have a look at what is being developed in the area, shops, schools, industries as well as housing are a good indicator of supply and demand which is of course what drives house prices.

Most of all, have a look at where it sits on a topographic map to see if it's likely to flood or be caught in a landslide.

Yes excellent point Expat There is a website that can give you the percentage chance of flooding in your area but I can't remember the name of it.

flood areas

I think it depends enormously on the location and the very local market and which kind of house you are in...there is definitely an oversupply of apartments here for the size of town and they are building more and more so they are hard to sell

and because I want to sell in the next twelve months I can guarantee that there will be a halt here coupled with a price drop and the place i want to move to will be incredibly in demand and buoyant with rapidly rising prices until i move in when there will be an unprecedented drop while being a boom here where I have just moved from

These flood areas are likely to change in the near future, unfortunately.

If you go higher up, make sure there's something around to anchor the land in place or you'll be looking at mudslide instead of flood.

I imagine they will keep going up a bit, although not by such a rate as they did between 1999 and 2005. Typically in the 90s a mortgage of 3x your income could get you a house. These days, the average house costs a shade under £200,000 and the average income is just over £20,000, so it's now ten times as much. If house prices slow down a little, and salaries get a chance to catch up, that may help the first-time buyer market a bit.

interesting one
we sold our house in 2 days in april for the asking price and we were due to move 3 weeks ago till our vendor pulled out at the last minute
since then, we have been frantically looking but the housing market seems to have cooled a lot
In april we could view 15 - 20 houses per week, now if there are one or two we are lucky
i am think it may be a combination of the summer holiday dip and higher interest rates
we live in commuter land on tube and train lines and near the M25 and M11 which means prices won't seriously crash

Where are you thinking of buying WWW>

and of course any dip/rise is relative if you want to stay in the market.

but if you are trading up ie increasing your mortgage and there is a fall you lose percentage wise

this is really good for looking at prices in your area

they're going up slightly more slowly than our savings here, which is just as well.

Ooh interesting replies! Thanks for that Iota, v useful especially as there was flooding near here.

CD, we'll be buying in home counties, about an hour ish from London, will look at your link in a minute.

Senora, I am just an armchair socialist you know

LIZS, that's most of the year isn't it?

Heifer that's intersting about your sale/purchase.

Carmenere, yes, I've been looking at actual sold prices too, absolutely.

I guess maybe I think, mostly, that as long as we can afford the repayments (we can) and as long as we intend to stay a long time (we do, we will only move if it's our dream house or has the potential to be) then maybe it doesn't matter - it's like having children, if you wait for ever for the time to be right you might just never do it.

Any other views also welcome, who was it asking us all thsi recently, wasn't it a bloke?