Housepricecrash.co.uk - what a bunch miserable buggers. Can I get some normal folks opinions please?

[DaddyCool]

.... and not some 45 old wally still living with mother and bitter because he spent all his money on model trains instead of a down-payment back in 1998?

Not a good cross section on there at all.

Is it going to crash do you think? Please give me your opinions. As far as I can see it's a 50/50 split on the nation's opinion but I would like to see how similar people to myself (parents with small children) think.

Nobody knows. Agree with you about housepricecrash.co.uk. Very bitter bunch. I think you work out whether you can afford it and allow for some interest rate rises. Can't really see what else you can do.

anniemac - no not really. It's a terraced house. We could extend into the roof but DH is a builder and tells me that it is a nightmare to do and a nightmare living in the house when its done. And doesn't add much value. Possibly we could add a small conservatory but we don't have a large garden either. Its not too awful now but the boys aren't going to want to share forever... And there are other issues with the area but at least we have a roof over our heads (must try to hold that thought )

I know DC I love it here but prices are so high now and it may be called London by the sea but it is not London in terms of jobs and facilities.I think if you don't overstretch yourself owning your own home is great and a real secure feeling but the recent trend for withdrawing equity from your house could see people in trouble It is a house and home not a piggy bank

Surely an extra room adds value. If it adds the same as the amount you spent, it's cheaper than moving. And even renting somewher else for two months is probably cheaper than moving.

Perhaps I should get your DH to do the job then . Its a narrow house and there really isn't much space. There are 2 roof spaces rather than one big one so the room we made won't be huge and then there's a problem of where to fit in a staircase without intruding on another room. We did consult and estate agent when we had it on the market a few years ago and he confirmed that it might add about 8-10k to the value.

If you don't like the area that's different of course.

hey daddycool - why are you coming back? (besides the obvious fact that it's better here in every way except financially)
you've only been out there a year right?

We have spent quite a bit on the house. New kitchen, bathroom, done work to the garden when we realised we weren't moving - but never quite got round to doing the loft. Maybe.

yup purplemonkey. you're absolutely right except things are actually quite expensive here other than houses. I pay more for:

food
car insurance
utilities (just because of the weather)

but the houses are painfully cheap and huge. but that's not everything as I now realise.

that's interesting to know b/c we're still not sure abput what wer'e going to do.

We are in the south-west anniemac. A few years ago that would have been about 10% of the value of the house! Not now though. One of the 'lofts' is too small to be used for anything really even storage - the ceiling were raised in that part of the house and the roof space is just a few feet. I think his argument was that for the cost, effort and loss of potential space in a bedroom, the extra room we would get wouldn't be worth it. It may of course be that he simply didn't fancy the job

If we loved the area, had no other problems with the house, I think we'd be more enthusiastic but that isn't really the case. I don't see this as being the house I want to see out my days in.

oh yes PM, I much prefer the UK.

Oh, and there's property tax (CDN equivelent to council tax) and it is quite extortionate. We rent right now but we'd be looking at paying about $400 per month just in property taxes if we bought this house.

The other difficult is that ideally we needed to make it into 2 rooms - otherwise one child would be stuck in the little box room downstairs. And we can't put windows dormers or even velux on the street side of the roof so we'd have to use borrowed light for one of the room possibly. We didn't think through all the permutations TBh because DH really didn't think it was a goer.

... and they pay a lot less so everything is relative.

ooh you are a property stalker anniemac!
Yes, we added two big rooms to our house when we did the loft conversion - one is a swanky bathroom with roll top bath etc.

Because the previous owners did some clever converting, we have four double bedrooms, three bathrooms and two offices/one office and one baby's room/one utility one office, depending on how you want to use the space. It is quite ingeniously done really. But even allowing for the £40K the loft cost us inc carpets etc, The price has gone up by at least £250K and that is completely insane. We are very, very close to two good and improving primaries, which is a good thing.

I love talking houses too!