Daily Mail: Is Britain's property bubble about to burst?

[FabulousSophie]

I was reading this article in the Daily Mail today, and was particularly interested to see there is now a campaign group called Priced Out, which is campaigning for affordable house prices. I googled them and went to their website, and signed their petition.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6064685/Fears-grow-house-prices-fall-fastest-rate-financial-crisis.html

I just saw that it is actually the front page headline on the printed version of the Daily Mail today, so this is obviously big.

In fairness, the Daily Fail is obsessed with property prices every day of the week, regardless of whether it's news-worthy or not.

It is usually obsessed with property prices going up, but this is a U-turn to reporting on property prices going down.

It’s very regional. Edinburgh is mobbed with foreign investors now that the London market has stagnated - house prices in Edinburgh are rocketing. One agent says 75% of all his buyers are now overseas.
My poor DD was outbid last week on a tatty 2 bed flat with no CH or DG - there were 19 bidders, and it went for £70,000 over the £195,000 asking price!
I’d be delighted with a price drop, but there’s absolutely no sign of it up here in Scotland any time soon.

now a campaign group called Priced Out,
Pretty sure they've been around for years.

I hope not before new years. Due to remortgage

At the moment it is a very London thing.
It has always rippled out in the past... don't see this time being any different

Pretty sure they've been around for years
It's the first I've heard about them. And if the Daily Mail has started going to them for comment on house price stories, it is a nice change in favour of balanced journalism.

Hi Sophie! Hope you manage to buy somewhere soon.

balanced journalism Rarely a description of what's found in the Daily Mail!!!
FWIW, I think it's unlikely that there will be any sort of dramatic crash, probably more likely a bit of a correction followed by a few years of stagnation, that alongside inflation will have the effect of bringing prices to a slightly more realistic level.

I do not know what the future holds, but I do know that expectations have shifted substantially since about a year ago, when many people could not even imagine prices slowing down. Expectations can change rapidly, and just because people expect prices to stagnate today, does not mean they will have those exact same expectations next month.

I do not know what the future holds
Nobody does! It's hard enough to predict what will happen to property prices at the best of times, with the current number of variables and uncertainty is pretty close to impossible.
a year ago, when many people could not even imagine prices slowing down
I think that anyone who was expecting property to continue increasing in price at around 10%pa year after year was seriously delusional.

Each year for pretty much the last 15 years there's been a prediction that property prices are about to crash. Is that about to happen? Who really knows? My personal view is that a crash is unlikely, and several years of stagnation is probably what we will see.

There is more than one housing market, there are hundreds of different little markets within the country that all behave slightly differently, partly why making accurate predictions is so tricky.

Only a couple of weeks ago DM published this article: www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-6034629/UK-house-prices-rise-fastest-pace-November-new-record-high-activity-remains-soft.html

The Queen asked why nobody saw the Financial Crisis coming. Likewise, just because people today cannot see falls in property prices coming, does not mean they will not happen. What people expect and what actually happens are two very different things.

why nobody saw the Financial Crisis coming
I think there were some people that did.
just because people today cannot see falls in property prices coming does not mean they will not happen
That's not what I'm saying. My opinion is that I think a sudden, dramatic crash is unlikely, but of course I have no idea what the next couple of years have in store, and nobody else does for certain either.
Similarly, just because some people do predict falls in property prices, does not necessarily mean it will happen for certain.

It makes for good headlines, but 'average' prices and 'average' falls are fairly useless measures. What happens to the price of a 2 bed terrace in Yorkshire will be different to what happens to the price of a 2 bed flat in Mayfair. There are loads of micro climates that you can't really generalise from to give a national picture.

The Daily Mail is wise enough simply to ask the question, Is Britain's property bubble about to burst?, rather than to try to predict the future.

As I said, expectations of what will happen, and what actually happens are two very different creatures. I am more concerned about what actually happens, rather than people's predictions of what will happen. Only time will tell, and no doubt it will make a mockery of today's opinions.

Why would it make a mockery of today’s opinions? Everyone has different opinions now, there’s no hive mind. A huge crash is unlikely but we are overdue a correction and some falls in price are now expected by many. It won’t help first time buyers who are well short of funds/income, but will be a nice discount for those who were nearly there already.

make a mockery of today's opinions
"Opinions are like aresholes, everyone has one!"

Whatever your opinion you can normally find someone to agree with you, if you look hard enough.

Ponders whether Sophie will ever start a thread on any other subject. . . .

HAve you spotted a trend....?!?!

"Opinions are like aresholes, everyone has one!"
Some people are more opinionated than others. I am not a fan of very opinionated people.

If you look through the thread, unlike others, who cannot resist exhibiting their arseholes in public, I have given no opinion.
I just like to ponder what has happened, and what might happen. But I also like to see time teaching highly opinionated people some humility.

All the time we have the idiotic situation where our population is allowed to grow through uncontrolled immigration, I don't think property values will drop too much.

Of course there are always rises and falls over the years, so maybe we are due another dip, but they always recover.

Property is still an excellent investment though, especially in the long term. I would rather put my trust in property for our old age than the very risky stock market.

The daily mail o matic could probably come up with this one.
www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

Priced out has been around for at least 10 years as I remember doing a research project about housing with my students. My house is worth less than we paid in 2007.

In other news, property prices from the only official source, the Land Registry, is up again.
www.propertywire.com/news/uk/property-prices-3-year-year-uk-falling-london/

It seems not people are selling and not many people are buying. For prices to go up or down significantly, one of those has to change.

In other news, property prices from the only official source, the Land Registry, is up again.
This the same story as the Bloomberg story on the other thread, which unpicks the Land Registry data, and shows that prices nationwide overall have fallen for the last 5 months, which is why the falls have not shown up in the yearly figure yet. At the current rate of decline, the yearly figure should turn negative in the autumn.