MSE News: Halifax: House prices 'to remain flat next year'

brit1234 wrote: »

More likely house prices to continue falling next year. Even with record low interest rates, money for lending scheme and Newbuy they are falling. You can't keep interest rates low for ever, they will go up as our credit rating is down graded and our gilt market explodes Also the foreign buyers in London are drying up now, the final housing bubble prop is falling away..

Let's say then that they will keep the interest rates low and I mean the BoE rates of 0.5% for the next 4 years.
Now it would appear that the banks, buildings societies and other lending groups aren't passing this onto the houses buyers because the best borrowing rates are between 3 and 6 per cent and longer term fixed are more. Savers and investors also aren't making much either so it is holding up house prices.
(This I believe the government has designed and it thinks will re build the banks cash assets).

However...
I know a lot of savers are considering moving their money over to the peer to peer savings and lending companies or at least some of it.... could it be that the banks start to lose liquid capital that they have to such organistions and become more unstable as a result?

The low BoE rates must be eroding the true value of the £ also and obviously the real government reserves ....

Regarding houses and property..
Traditional would be buyers simply often aren't earning enough to buy even a 1 bed flat and as the government continues to co-erce people into low paying part-time temporary jobs with little prospect of ever escaping the poverty trap.

What chance will these workers have of buying and owning?

And I'm talking about the bulk of bread and butter workers - shop workers, the postmen etc etc.
Are they destined to spend a lifetime locked into paying a crippling rent?

You will realise that in the governments pursuit of massaging the employment figures it can't mean a surge in property prices. The truth is they all have been highly overpriced for a long time...

It was only the musical chair gamble approach from the banks and building societies that let the prices go out of control..

What happened generational mortgages where your children were to supposedly continue on paying mortgages ... they did actually cook up this daft scheme just before the American banks collapses and Northern Rock..?

Truth is no one really knows what will happen...

But how can someone working on the till at Tesco's ever buy a studio flat that is selling for £4 million which is what the people thinking the house prices are going to "surge" inexorably upwards in the 5 years believe if you apply their (il)logical conclusion.