So house prices are falling, but has your house-buying budget shrunk also?

[ClosedForCleaning]

If predictions are correct, and sellers around here wake up to the fact, it looks like we could afford a pretty nice house for the price a very modest one would have been last year. However,with all the financial insecurity, job losses etc, I'm now thinking we'd be more likely to go for something that meets our minimum needs rather than stretch for something nicer. Does this make sense? What are others thinking?

We knew that with a biggish mortgage we could afford the all singing show house but decided to buy something more modest but still lovely in order to have financial peace of mind.

ah... it's marrying the modest with the "still lovely" that I need to work on! We rent a perfectly adequate but not at all lovely house at the moment.

Wait a bit longer and you will get both! we were worried about our cash in the banks and so have bought somewhere sooner than we needed to.But we got a deal that was too good to refuse but if you are ok in rented you will get a real deal next summer/winter if you can last.

Just running over our numbers now.

Shares and investments - all down (some possibly non-existent)
Offer accepted on our house - lower than we'd hoped
Petrol, utilities etc - all higher than when we first did our numbers earlier this year

So despite DH having a good secure job we are going for modest but still nice rather than grand. We are buying now though, reassuring ourselves that at least we are not buying at the peak of the market.

No we've been saving for years, when the time comes to buy we'll be putting down 50% deposit on a house currently valued at £500,000 so about £100,000.

katie i admire your optimism but even i don't think a 500k house will ever be 200!

PMSL katie are you moving to my street that's only just over 50% lots of London areas might do that.
I read last night we have nearly matched the falls in the last crash so far this year (% terms) and it's not getting any slower!

£500k houses by us were £180 in 2001 that's how mad it all is.
And not even in London, in fact in a part of the country where the biggest employer is the government, of course they never make cut backs, redundancy's, wage freezes etc etc do they