House prices

[Twiglets1]

Hi Guys, we got to the end of the last thread so need another one on this controversial topic!

And to respond to @CrashyTime I don't say "demand is strong" over and over again. In fact, I rarely comment on demand at all. My posts are more focussed on house prices and interest rates/mortgage rates.

And I don't deny economic "reality", I just don't exaggerate how bad the house price correction is likely to be. I have a running bet with @XVGN that property prices generally will fall about 5% in 2023 and another 5% in 2024 so I do believe prices are falling in most areas. Just nothing like the 30-35% crash predicted by some!

Shame Mumsnet doesn’t have an Ignore feature isn’t it?

Crashy was the only one of the House Price Crash crew I liked 😭

I’m not on HPC and never was. But fingers in ears won’t help the majority of posters here, so I post economic facts what’s happening now.

Hence I posted in 2020/21 in regards to inflation and fixing mortgages for 10 years when the BoE was saying it was ‘transitory’ (which you liked to repeat) but you know that.

I actually still think it would be good if house prices dropped. I'm not an island and I have close gen z relatives and lovely younger end of millennial colleagues and I would like housing to not be so much of a shit show for them. We negotiated some money off the house we bought and borrowed a fair bit under what the bank said we could afford so ought to be OK.

We completely renovated our house and it took so long due to dh being an architect and having very high standards. It did look great to be fair but we were so slow! There's no way we could do that again with a child in the mix. We didn't want to have to do everything straight away this time round

I admire people who have the energy and skills to renovate houses but that’s just not us, unfortunately! We would have to pay other people for almost everything so I doubt it would end up being financially worthwhile plus I would probably have a breakdown from the stress of it all. But I bet your old house did look amazing with an architect for a husband.

This is such a good post. The difference between theory and practice.

You're very wise to avoid doing it. We found that small scale builders that work on houses were such a rip off and so hard to get hold of that it was cheaper and quicker to buy all the tools and learn how to do it yourself 😂

But it did nearly break us and neither of us could invision doing it again with a preschooler. Plus this time the massive inflation means it is so much more expensive. It would be very hard to make money by extending your house at the moment, which is why we ruled out extending ours. A tin of paint seems to cost double what it did when we were doing it before for example.

We will do stuff to this house, as its just too hard to resist doing it. But nothing needs to be done really. It's cosmetic this time, no needing to take crumbling plaster off the walls with a chisel on the weekend.

Are you looking to buy at the moment too?

No, but I have bought and sold a few times. Currently sitting in my city house, within walking distance of my DD’s school — and not any of the beautiful village properties I had daydreamed about on Rightmove.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/08/02/mortgage-rates-lowest-level-in-a-year.html

US recession is on the way, which will have a knock on effect here

House prices now are expected to rise every month for rest of year - there you have it folks I was right. As I said before this is not my first rodeo, I have seen it all before in this crazy game we call housing.
the usual pattern for some is hope crash is on the way - realise it’s not - buy - get on with other stuff and not pay attention to markets anymore.

I've been round this block many times too-negative equity, crashes booms et al and heard all the doom and gloom. I know people who stood to lose properties due to negative equity a few years ago but hung on to properties now worth £1m+
I'm not one of them sadly and at times had to work extra hard to pay the mortgage but have happy memories of living in homes I loved with my kids, could decorate as I wished and didn't have to worry about a landlord selling up over our heads. I think there is a sweet spot between the greedy "homes under the hammer" mentality and crystal ball gazing experts predicting the end of the property market as we know it.

Who is doing the expecting though?

The government desperately need the wheels to stay on so all the propaganda will have that bias.

@standardmum and @Farting I wouldn't waster time trying to engage with that poster. They pop up every couple of weeks, say exactly the same thing and then disappear. I think they are trying to convince themselves that everything's fine.

Everything is fine though for the home owner it’s the FTB I feel sorry for. The general consensus by some house price crash people is that people should wait (renting) as a once in a generation deal is around the corner. All that happens is the FTB ends up renting longer and when they finally do buy are paying more.

Yes I agree it’s fine for the homeowners who have been repaying their mortgages for many years & it’s fine for the ones who didn’t take out big mortgages in the first place.

Like you, I feel sorry for FTBs at the moment (& those in the first few years of a mortgage). Mostly I feel sorry for renters though, unless they are choosing to rent because it suits their lifestyle.

Totally agree, I still remember when I was renting some 15 year ago. There isn’t a day that goes by i am not grateful. I am realistic in my thoughts about what will happen to house prices - they will always go up over the long term (and when I say long term you could bank on every 10 years they are more expensive than the previous price 10 years previous)

You cannot bank on that. It's easy to find cases where that just is not true. If you pay too much then you could be waiting 20 years just to get what you paid even ignoring inflation.

Even in that example you have given which shows no house price growth in 20 years which is highly unusual - the person would have paid off their mortgage more or less so are still much better off than if they had rented.

That example took me less than two minutes to find and I was avoiding flats (because of cladding and service charge issues), retirement homes, and hell-hole towns. I just want you to stop making blatantly false statements about how prices are guaranteed to be higher in 10 years time.

You can always find individual cases that go against a trend but generally speaking, house prices in Yorkshire (where don’t know the postcode of the house @XVGN is using as an example, only that it’s in Scarborough) rose over 35% between Q3 2006 & Q1 2024. According to the Nationwide house price calculator.

The fact that this particular house fell instead of rising in that period is unusual & went against the general trend for reasons we don’t know.

I would imagine the physical condition of the house had deteriorated in that time.

You idiot Twiggers. The post code is right there in the image. How many times do you have to mischaracterise my posts?

I never said that falling prices was the trend. I'm just warning people not to blindly accept the guarantees of someone on the internet that prices will definitely be higher after 10 years. That's all.

I was looking on my mobile and didn’t see the postcode, thanks for calling me an idiot. Are you always so polite to people?