I'm posting this here on purpose, irrespective of whether this derails OP's thread or not - sorry, OP. However, I have sound reason for doing so.
To me, this is not about whether Charlie is right or wrong about house prices. It's about you replying on almost any thread in which he has been referenced to advise other people on the thread that he cannot be taken seriously.
I'm sorry, but put house prices aside for a moment - a LOT of the advice Charlie gives out is really level headed and sensible and has been really helpful to me, as a would-be FTB. For starters, I now know how to download and analyse the data for myself, and it stops me from believing headlines (which journalists just copy and paste from press releases without fact checking).
I dislike you swaying people away from watching him on the basis that you cannot believe he can be taken seriously.
It doesn't matter what he's trying to sell, if and when he does. I repeat:
a LOT of the advice Charlie gives out is really level headed and sensible and has been really helpful to me, as a would-be FTB.
Your argument seems to be that such substantial house price falls have yet to be seen. And that any 'sensible' person wouldn't believe his -35% prediction.
Perhaps you have referred to what appears in the press, perhaps you have looked at the Land Registry's own press releases, which are seasonally adjusted so as not to scare people (read: fudged with). But the data appears in a way that's not very useful. It's a single figure, with every single property lumped together, and they use AVERAGES and not MEDIANS.
They cover the entire country as one, they don't show you regions.
They don't break anything down into property types in their releases.
They fail to provide enough information or in the right format for the reader to make an informed decision about its potential accuracy, or lack thereof.
I've crunched some numbers myself tonight. I have looked at two months: April 2022 and October 2023. October 2023 will still be a sample size, but as it represents far more than 10% of previous house sale numbers, we should take it seriously.
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
MEDIAN - ALL PROPERTIES
April 1st-30th 2022 - £214,000 (average: £256,996)
Oct 1st-31st 2023 - £212,000 (average: £241,092)
MEDIAN DETACHED, NON NEW-BUILD
Apr 22 - £331,000
Apr 23 - £300,000
Oct 23 - £308,330
NORTH YORKSHIRE
MEDIAN - ALL PROPERTIES
April 1st-30th 2022 - £255,000 (average £316,747)
Oct 1st-31st 2023 - £253,000 (average £307,739)
Apr 22 - £425,000
Apr 23 - £385,000
Oct 23 - £375,000
- however, when I download all the data, add it up and get an AVERAGE for October 2023, the average is £411,910, which is substantially different to 375k, and gives the impression prices haven't fallen all that much since April 22 (for those who don't understand - it's because people are selling more expensive houses, not because prices have risen).
Purchases completed in October 23 will have generally been agreed in April 23. The BoE base rate rose by 1% afterwards.
Do you think that house prices continued to grow afterwards? In some areas, I'm sure they did, especially when it comes to well-to-do areas and catchment areas for the most sought-after schools.
You can see the stark difference in house prices when you lump them all together versus when you look at a particular property type, the sort of house I am after in North Yorkshire has dropped by 11.76%, so as much as you think Charlie's plucking numbers from [insert relevant part], I really don't. That's not to say I believe they'll necessarily fall 35% peak to trough across all property types, across the country, but things aren't looking good for detached home owners in Notts or N Yorks, are they?
I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss him and his views without data, on the basis of people being 'sensible.'
Feel free to tell me my three hours of number crunching this afternoon was not the actions of a 'sensible' person, by all means.
I hope I've made my point clear. You and I got into a spat about Charlie about a month after I started posting on Mumsnet and you have yet to stop warning first time buyers away from him, without fully understanding the breadth of advice he gives out (which is tedious, long winded and hard work to watch).
Your argument is: there are other sources out there.
No, there are not. There's no single source that presents the numbers the way I just have. There's no single source who talks you through how to make an offer, how to avoid agreeing to raise your offer because EAs are taught how to do that, the history of house pricing in the UK (along with Alex Groundwater), the economy, and so many more things I can't remember because it's taken a bleeding age to write this post and I'm now starving. There is no source that gives me all this information, even now, six months down the line, when google target feeds me all manner of housing news.
There has been NO single or even multiple sources that have furnished me with what I now know about the housing market and the behaviour of estate agents and buyers and sellers from watching hour upon hour of him droning on and on.
(dear other readers: Charlie's like Marmite, but I'm pretty ambivalent about him)
There may be sources for you, who has bought and sold multiple times and knows all the the tricks, but for someone who has never bought before, which includes the OP @User7164, there's nobody out there who can help a newb as much as he does.
I'll be saving a link to this post in case I need to reply to you in the future :)