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Original poster

House price bores this way, please...

258 replies

southutsire · 13/09/2007 16:51

If you would like to discuss and pointlessly speculate about the housing market, please post here, so that I don't ruin dinner parties and every conversation I have in RL by boring everyone to death on the subject.

What do you think will happen in the next months and why?

OP posts:
WideWebWitch · 13/09/2007 22:07

I'm currently on primelocation in another window, drooling over what we'd get in, say, Wales. Which is no good to man nor beast since we live in the SE and don't wnat to buy in Wales but hey, it's amusing me

DaphneHarvey · 13/09/2007 22:12

southutsire - that is interesting about your rent. The interesting thing about my housing cost is that if I rented the house I currently pay a mortgage on, it would cost me an extra £1000 per month. The reason, of couse, is that our mortgage is less than a third of the value of the property. But then I have been a home owner for 19 years, lived through the crash of the early 90s, been in negative equity for at least 7 years.

I work in property. I would say:

  1. you are never going to find the perfect place

  2. don't worry about house prices unless you are a professional investor or think you may want to move away from the area you currently live in to a much more expensive area in the next few years. Once you own a property, any fall in the price of yours will be matched by a fall in the price of anything you want to buy. Unless you are moving to a place that already has vastly different house prices.

In all other respects, property prices really won't affect you that much at all.

Having said all that, as a FTB, you might want to wait 6 months or so and see if you can save yourself a bit .

WideWebWitch · 13/09/2007 22:18

Do you reckon they're going to fall then DaphH?

BreeVanDerCampLGJ · 13/09/2007 22:24

The house next door sold in May, it took 72 hours to sell, over the asking price as well.

House five doors up really struggled to sell they took 5 days.

I guess some areas are still out performing others.

Our house has gone up by 60% in 7 years, it is a lovely warm feeling until you realise...............I don't want to live in the wilds of Scotland or Wales.

DaphneHarvey · 13/09/2007 22:39

WWW - definitely. I live and work in a booming area. House prices up by 70% - 100% in 3 years. But they are beginning to drop a little. Am 100% certain they will fall everywhere else too, except perhaps Kensington, Chelsea, Belgravia, Hampstead, Islington and all the other ponce-tastic places you can think of.

1dilemma · 13/09/2007 23:19

oh I shall come and join you later I just have to write a talk for work first, (have to choose the subject of the talk before that though)
I am sooo looking forward to this I could bore for Britain on the subject of house prices.
I'm in S. London too.
DH I was rather hoping to save a couple of hundred thousand
propertysnake is fab I'm just sorry we can't find out where those houses are!

1dilemma · 13/09/2007 23:20

LGJ whereabouts are you?
London?
N S E W?

BreeVanDerCampLGJ · 13/09/2007 23:54

The home counties, with a GU post code.

1dilemma · 14/09/2007 00:24

ahhh
(as you can see my talk isn't getting done still trying to choose subject!)

JesusDeVille · 14/09/2007 02:21

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6994099.stm

Suggests that the problems in the US sub-prime market are affecting the UK market. Wouldn't be surprised to see more rate rises in the UK, which might push prices down a bit. It interests me, because we're renting and looking to buy soon.

chocolateteapot · 14/09/2007 07:42

Things have definitely slowed down overall with some drops going on here (Dorset/Hampshire border). Vendors are beginning to take lower offers as well. A friend has bought a house for £300k which was on for £350k. It has a massive garden and has loads of potential to extend it. A year ago it would have been snapped up at the asking price and a drop of that scale would have been unthinkable.

I've also noticed a few properties going under offer very quickly then coming back on again. And there are some which are hanging around for a good few months.

Rightmove's latest report shows prices have fallen by 2.6% but are putting it down to there being less 4 bed houses on the market due to HIPs

www.rightmove.co.uk/pdf/p/hpi/press/HousePriceIndex17September2007_0471.pdf

I personally suspect that with the tighening of lending criteria and the high levels of personal debt that exist at the moment, there is some pain ahead for the housing market. But I lasted all of 2 weeks doing Economics "A" Level so haven't got a clue really !

chocolateteapot · 14/09/2007 07:43

Oh just read that the Rightmove data has been leaked so is not definitely correct.

Chickhick · 14/09/2007 07:44

In our area, house prices are still rocketing. A neighbour recently put 2 houses in our street on the market, a 2 up 2 down for £270,000 and a 3 bed terrace for £450,000, then took them off the market and put them up again 2 months later, the 2 bed is now £305,000 and the 3 bed (which sold the same day) was put put on again at £470,000. What other way could you make money like that? It means we are stuck because we are in an almost identical 2 bed and there is no way we could afford nearly half a million pounds just for an extra bedroom!

WideWebWitch · 14/09/2007 08:39

Did anyone see the beginning of Newsnight last night? Northern Rock has just gone to the Bank of England for emergency cash...

thanks for that DH.

The longer it goes the happier I am that we're waiting.

WideWebWitch · 14/09/2007 08:40

Are you in London chickhick? I do think London will be ok for quite a while to come although DH are you in London?

Original poster
southutsire · 14/09/2007 09:15

1dilemma - propertysnake seem to have found a way to link to some of the houses again so you can see which ones they are - atm seems to be the ones that have ads in newspapers.

Blimey, things are hotting up in the banking world today! I guess Northern Rock are realising it isn't such a good idea to lend people 10 times their salary after all . It is going to be harder to get a mortgage now, which you would think will have an effect over the coming months/years.

OP posts:
Original poster
southutsire · 14/09/2007 10:07

shreddies - ooh, let's see if there's more of us and form a crack team of property bears who go round putting in ridiculous offers on houses to puncture the bubble in our area .

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mumblechum · 14/09/2007 10:24

Certainly most of the houses which have gone on the market in our village (ranging from £1m to£1.4m) are not shifting.

There are about 5 of them and two have recently got "To Let or For Sale" signs and have reduced their asking prices.

I personally think that if house prices go down, it's no bad thing. Although ours would go for less than the valuation last year, that's fine, as less estate agents commission, lower price of house to buy and less Stamp Duty.

hippipotami · 14/09/2007 11:58

Bree, I am in a GU postcode as well and things are still mad here. In our 'village' a small 3 bed detached has just gone for 370K, and it has no garden and no off-road parking, AND the 3rd bedroom is in the loft, AND it is on a busy road inbetween 2 schools and opposite a pre-school so parking will be a nightmare!

Having said that, there is a detached victorian 3 bed detached in my road which is struggeling to sell. It needs complete gutting and starting again, but it had got a huge huge garden and a garage and lots of driveway parking. But the amount of work needed is putting people off. The vendors dropped the price by 20K last month, but still no takers.
(If I had the money I would snap it up because it is an ugly duckling that could easily be transformed into my dream home)

newgirl · 14/09/2007 12:41

renting is more expensive than a mortgage in our area eg mortgage for a 3 bed house woudl be 1200 a month - to rent more like 2000! buying is a no-brainer round here

Blu · 14/09/2007 12:50

Everything for sle in our road is being snapped up before it is even advertised, afaics. For prices much higher than last year, too.

BUT pockets of London can't really be compared to the rest of the country - this is the effect of people panicking to buy something slightly more affordable than the more fashionable areas.

DP and I filled in the ofsted q'airre about DS's school this a.m and gave all the categories top marks...to ensure house prices near the school stay high Actually that is a lie - we filled it in as we saw fit and most categories were top scoring BUT it crossed my mnd that it would be a cynical expedient move to contribute to an ofsted that affected house peices.

shreddies · 14/09/2007 12:56

lol southutsire, wouldn't that be great

UnquietDad · 14/09/2007 12:58

In Sheffield, it's schools, schools and schools that seems to swing it for people. Houses in decent catchments go like hot cakes still, and for over the asking price. Those in not-so-good catchments struggle a bit.

toadstool · 14/09/2007 13:27

I'd say the market has over-heated and may well be about to decline, if only slightly. We've been trying to sell since Feb (Bristol). The market is weird - very few proceedable buyers, lots of deals falling through because they have so much choice; we lost 3 buyers along the way. Funny thing is we're buying in an alleged 'property boom area' in the SE and it seems to be exactly the same. Very odd.

Original poster
southutsire · 14/09/2007 13:40

It is fascinating to hear about these areas where people are obviously getting a rush of blood to the head... that's up to this month, though. I wonder what next month will bring?

I just can't see who is going to buy these 3-bed terraces for 650k (up my road). A few years ago these would have been 1st-time buyer properties. The kind of 1st-time buyers who earn enough to buy these (so, what, over £200k on a normal salary multiple?) would surely expect more than this?! Where is their butler going to sleep?

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