What makes you think housing is going to become ''easily'' affordable?

THSHARIF wrote: »

to many people say thier will be a drop, max drop will be 10%, if you can negetiate a good price with the seller in this current time , you can aviod loosing any of your deposit in negative equity.

it is hard to get a mortgage at the moment but if you worry about rates giong up or down by 1%. you might as well not buy at all.
the kind of money you need as deposit is thousunds, compared to £40 or $50 quid each rises in interset rates month.
if you got they money in the bank use it know to your advantage.

The searing logic of your well reasoned argument was only let done by one or two minor presentational errors, which I have helpfully highlighted for you. Other than that, I now know that 10% is the limit. I can now make major financial plans for the future based on your expert advice, so thank you.

South Wales - great example!

Myself and three of my single friends all have mortgages on our own houses. Alone. We're in our mid-20's and bought within the last couple of years (I first bought in 2005, Friend A in 2006 and Friends B&C in 2007).

We're fairly average earners, working in professional office jobs. And we each have a 2-3 bedroom terraced house in the City centre, which we can comfortably afford, as well as indulging in decent cars, going out socialising / dating etc...

As long as young, single people in this area can still comfortably afford houses (not pokey flats but proper family houses), why should the prices ever drop? Hey, I even considered selling up and buying two properties (you know, cottage on the beach and crashpad in the city) :rotfl:.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Not if your gf leaves you for a bloke with a bigger ... wallet.

As a single person you couldn't buy those.

True, although I'd like to think that my GF is not as shallow as that and that money isnt everything, us being together is. which is why she stayed with me here instead of going back to England when we graduated. She also took the first job she could get so we could stay together. (although its nice to know where your loyalty's lay with comments like that :rolleyes:)

So what happens to joint incomes homes? you know? the ones where people are married and lived together and got a home? what happens if one of them leaves? will they still be able to afford the mortgage?

You can use that argument with everyone. I could'nt afford those and thus I would have to downsize.

More people are living longer so they are not leaving their current home as soon. Divorce is creating more households ditto the increased numbers of students and immigration. It is the household creation, running around 100,000 pa, which is putting on the squeeze in housing availability and pushing up prices.

The next housing shortage will be in normal 2 & 3 bed+ houses. There are far too many flats being built but builders are cutting back on building houses. Flats might drop like stones but decent sized homes are more likely to hold their current values. Urban regeneration is also wiping out thousands of terraced homes and replacing them mostly with nasty new build flats so there is a net loss of decent sized housing. This makes it even worse. There might be 300,000 empty homes in England (1.6% of the total stock) but if they are in the wrong place ie clapped out mining towns and other rough areas that no one wants to live in then their existence is pointless. The places with the highest number of empty homes have the lowest prices. Less than 2% empty suggests a very efficient market to me.

There has been a serious over supply in new build flats for years. Ones being sold in auction now are mostly fetching under 100k if they are being allowed to sell. Some were bought for 200k + in 2006 but that is new builds in Manchester for you