House price bores this way, please...

[southutsire]

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?

VAT on HIPS I think
Poncetastic is a lovely word.
What goes up must come down.....
Really hoping the gov. will use some of your money to shore up my poor financial decisions!!!!
(your=the population in general rather then any one poor individual mumsnetter)

Excellent article on house prices and why Gordon's a muppet

Excellent
Trouble is it's not employers and shareholders carrying that risk it's you and me!!
Agree too that drive for current single 20's to own their own affordable place is completely missing the point (I've always assumed it's simply to sell the 'shi%%y' units at the back at overinflated prices!!)

Hi Littleminx, yes, but I've bought and sold in a different market and I've had to chase estate agents to get them to show me places OR been told "there's a block viewing at x time, take it or leave it" - so the fact that eas are chasing me quite doggedly atm does seem to me a sign of a changing climate wrt prices.

Hi Wickedwaterwitch..... oh right, i see where you are coming from now......bloody hell, i dont know what agent you were using but they are not very professional if that is how they treated you in the first place .... weekends are very busy for us so we cant always get people in BUT we dont say fixed block, take it or leave it . In fact i often work late to accomodate people who can only get to viewings after 7pm or on a sunday afternoon after we have closed.

I have to say, last week the market was a bit slow and some people were wary due to the whole northern rock and interest rate thing, but this weekend has been manic and its picked up again, so christ knows. To be honest, nobody knows what the outcome of all this will be, its a gamble whatever you do i think, to be honest. Good luck!

From the telegraph "The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which has already reported that prices are heading downwards, thinks there is a one-in-10 chance of a full-blown crash of the type experienced in the 1990s. I feel their percentage is rather conservative, and would put it rather higher - maybe at about a one in four."

full article

Even a 1 in 4 chance isn't that high really

So do you think the London market is going to go down?

Don't know if you're asking LM particularly, but in my opinion, yes.

RICS are the biggest vested interest there is. If they say there is even the tiniest chance of a fall you can bet there is a much bigger chance than that. Ask yourself where you think they get these numbers from - I mean, 1 in 10 chance of 20% drop? They don't have a big-brained computer working these things out like Deep Thought. It's some blokes in RICS saying "Bloody hell, this looks bad. We'll look like we're in denial if we don't say something, though. Let's pull some disappointing but strangely reassuring numbers out of the air."

Newspaper editors are largely homeowners, so up to a point there is reluctance to report this stuff. But eventually the time comes when you look like a fool if you keep saying everything's going to be fine.

By 9.20 this am I had had two calls from agents asking if I was still looking Desperate?Drove down one of the most popular roads in our area re schools and lots of for sale boards which is unheard of in that road.Shows over I think at least here

the blonde........ yes i do think london prices will come down more than anywhere.... with all the financial stuff going on right now and the city big knobs not getting big bonus', property in london will have to drop drastically......... i worked in london until last year when we moved to herts because prices were bloody ridiculous. Both my husband and i have good jobs but couldnt afford to buy a decent house there. When i worked in London, the majority of house buyers there were city types on big bonus'so if they lose those then very few will be able to afford to buy there so a massive price drop!

I also have to say that most of the young city knobs who bought in london were up their own arses, so losing bonus' and prices dropping may make them come down a peg or 2

I feel a bit skeptical as it feels like they've been talking about a crash since 2000

City bonuses won't affect the market til the spring I suppose

Where I am in south west London, houses that six months ago were selling within days are now taking weeks to shift.
It had got to the point where estate agents would only do one day of block viewings on a property because they knew they'd get over-asking-price offers from that one day.
We were put off buying (we wanted a bigger house in the same area) by the fact that we'd have to pay silly money and make a decision on a house within hours.
Now the agents are more than happy to take individual viewings and I've seen lots of people have had to reduce their initial asking price to something more realistic.
I'm really glad things are calming down.

LM you're on our side really
isn't there a saying the higher they climb the harder they fall, London fell badly last time same this time, the prices are just nuts and an overpriced pile of crap is just that.
once your house ceases to make more than you do people will get fed up and the bottom will just fall

1dilemma..........indeed i am on your side!!

I may sell houses but i also have to fork out a large sum each month to bloody live in one!!!

I totally feel for people trying to get on the ladder, or people with children who need bigger house but cant afford it. The market has gone totally ridiculous over last few years and it needs to come down to be inline with inflation........every year house prices, council tax etc go up greatly, but our wages go up by a tiny bloody bit

Hello everyone, the ft has a piece on house prices today, here

IMO, it's only the immaculate houses in the best streets that are selling quickly at around the asking price, or absolute wrecks which builders can completely renovate and still make a profit on. many buy-to-let landlords are bailing out even though there is a healthy demand for decent-quality rented homes for young professionals and students.

I went away at half term and came back to 3 messages from agents I have registered with offering houses I have viewed in the last month with significan price drops

There seems to be nothing on the market here, I went into an agent yesterday and they only had 2 properties in my price band

Will things improve after Xmas?

I expect even in a normal market a lot of people don't want the hassle as Christmas approaches. However, there are loads advertised where we are (SEast).

I get email alert one a month from ourproperty.co.uk when the land registry prices are released. They used to to mail me actual sold prices for properties within 500m of the postcodes I entered, but have now switched to sending me the whole town because there have been so few sales.

That observation is across all price bands btw.

Oooh, can't believe I missed this thread. I do love a good old prattle about house prices! Just moved from Stoke Newington in north London to Barnet further north.

We sold our Stokey house in August and got a very good price for it - 30k over the asking price after a mini bidding war between 3 potential buyers. The market was very buoyant in that area over the summer, but the estate agent that sold our house was in touch recently and said the market has slowed down a fair bit. Not as many bidding wars/ sealed bids / massive block viewings of properties, and people much less quick to go over the asking price. Is it just a blip? I don't know. Prices rocketed ridiculously quickly in Stoke Newington - it was getting silly. Our house appreciated nearly 200k in 2 yrs. That can't be right! It just had to slow down, really. We bought our new house shortly afterwards (less than amonth later I think) in the same climate of crazy offers over the asking price (got gazumped twice over the summer...boo hoo!). But eventually got our house for 5k under the asking price - very lucky as it wasn't due to come on the market until October but we'd got friendly with the estate agent and he gave us the nod on it, so got it without anyone ever viewing it. Funnily enough, without doing anything to it at all the agent reckons it is probably worth 20-30k more 3 months later !!?? It's crazy, and just makes me think the market is a bit shaky and unpredictable at the moment.

My view has become increasingly that we should wait for a year before buying.

Prices have fallen for the last 2 months. According to the FT house price index (which uses actual selling prices) the market started cooling rapidly in June, before the credit crisis. Now the market is getting a kicking from lots of directions:
No sign of an end to the credit problems - in fact things look set to worsen with banks admitting huge losses from US subprime, and nobody knows the true extent of dodgy lending in the UK.
Buy-to-let demand has collapsed due to low yields.
Mortgage approvals down hugely.
Repossessions predicted to rise 50% over the next months.

The 'high demand, lack of supply' issue that is supposed to prevent a fall looks very weak. Demand isn't the same as wanting a house - it's being able to afford one (or get someone to lend you the money). Supply is also rising as the buy-to-letters exit the market. Purely anecdotally, where we have been looking, hardly anything is moving, and the proportion of empty properties (ex BTL or recently developed) is quite large.

I like this 'typical crash' graph: bubble psychology
and am guessing that we're in the 'denial' stage now. Reckon on a dead cat bounce in the spring.

people sell and like to make some money & those who buy like to think they're getting a bargain - when it's a fair price for both then we hear about a housing market crash.

Hi Southutsire -we've come to the same decision. But - I think the difficulty is picking out what's likely to happen in your area as opposed to the national picture iyswim. Three flats on my road have just gone on the market at far higher prices than they would have done last year - so does that mean that prices in this particular area are still buoyant, or does three flats on the market all at once mean that buy-to-letters are getting out of the market, or both?

Well shreddies, it all depends on what someone's prepared to pay for them. I buy the local paper every week and see lots of houses that were on four months ago. And have been reduced and they're STILL not selling.

WWW you're right - they haven't sold yet.... the amount that we would have to pay now to get a third bedroom and a garden is ridiculous and depressing, but I still wonder if areas we are looking at - ie S.London, not ridiculously far out, near a park etc etc WILL stay high, just because there are so many people in our boat and a finite number of decent, smallish houses in those areas.

shreddies - I can't see how any one area will stagnate while everywhere else falls. The not-so-nice areas drag down the nicer ones, albeit slightly less dramatically. London is still rising (though the rate of growth has halved in the last few months). But the overall figures disguise the fact that there are only a few boroughs that are still rising (Westminster, Lambeth), and more are falling. City job (and bonus cuts) will soon see a bit of sense returning, IMO.