House prices falling by c. 2% a month - so falls of 50% over 2 years quite feasible

GDB2222 wrote: »

There is a real possibility that large numbers of BTL landlords will come to the conclusion that they should sell now, even at a modest loss, so as to forestall an even bigger one. If that happens, there could be a snowball effect, and prices could really plummet. Remember, also, that there are many BTL landlords who bought some time ago who could get out now with a profit. They may be very tempted to do so.

True, I know a few BTL guys and they are /have been hastily getting rid of latest buys.
One guy brought a whole estate, 100+, rented out to immigrants, who duly trashed them; he then had to renovate them all at his cost and now has had the receiver take over.
Unfortunately, IMO, greed caught him out.

carolt wrote: »

Absolutely - I think having children sharpens the mind marvellously on this one. As an adult, you can rationalise to yourself moving to an unsuitable/too small/grotty/overpriced property or a dodgy area on the grounds it's 'a step on the ladder'. You just can't do that with kids.

You can't explain to a 5 year old they've got to move to a house with a postage stamp garden and can't take their climbing frame/slide/sandpit etc because mummy and daddy get a really important piece of paper in return. Or explain that mummy can't be there when they get back from school anymore because she has to work every minute to pay the mortgage, as they've moved to (bought) an identical house to the one they previously rented in the next street, where mummy was there for them every day. And you can't even begin to think about slumming it in unsafe or dangerous areas.

.

In due course, as prices fall, the 2 choices will become equal again or buying may well become far cheaper again, as it was in the 90's. At that point, we shall buy.

Simple.

I really feel I have to respond to this...and I know we are all in different circumstances and have different views on how we choose to live our lives and manage our families BUT.....

The first part of your comment about the working all hours ....well, that depends on what you do for a living.
Some go for the money....and end up in a nice 5 bed in a leafy St...others don't and end up in something more modest on Twig St.
With a good education, the choices are all out there nowadays.

My OH didn't have the choice to go to college back in the 70's..he went to a rubbish school and had to leave, get any job and bring money into the household...80% of his wages went to his mother.

The 2nd part about about buying in the 90's. I can only comment on experience but it was just as hard then with a young family (those I knew without MAY have found it a little easier as they didn't have restrictions on the ammount of hours they could do or childcare costs) and our first house purchase was one of the hardest things we ever did.

It wasn't in a good location, it needed everything except the roof doing to it (which we did in bits and bobs over 6 yrs) and every month it was an effort to balance the budget. We saved on heating because it didn't have any, lived without a decent bathroom and had no proper kitchen for the first year.

I have a few photos and when I look back..I can't believe we lived (or rather camped) like that.

Our mortgage was X 3 on joint salary; the house cost £60k.

We traded up on location and size in 96 and we got X 3 salary again......and my kids didn't have us around all the time, there was never spare for a slide or whatever (but those things were really expensive then) and
we had another renovation job that had to fit into the odd hours spare.

And I wasn't around a lot of the time and when I was, I was tired BUT it was our choice.
A lesser paid line of work (something safe and PAYE say) with less hours wouldn't have enabled us to have bought either house.

If I had stayed at home F/T with the kids and relied on my OH to bring in the ££, we would probably still be living in our 'Nil by Mouth' high rise box paying a subsidised rent.

None of us have an absolute right to live in any area (I love Shad Thames but will never ever earn the salary to enable us to afford a flat there)...so......with houses, it's the same as everything else.

You cut your cloth to suit.

If your chosen area is way over your salray levels, then you have 2 choices.
Move to cheaoer area or go for the better paid work somehow.

I don't want to be antagonistic or personal...but just wanted to post what I first felt on reading the above.

ETA; interest rates made the mortgage much higher then.

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Don't confuse not buying with it being a matter of necessity.
--- Blah Blah---
Yes - there is definitely something wrong with the market when interest rates going above 5% triggers an mortgage repayment crisis for hundreds of thousands of people.

Does anyone else think it's strange (and revealing) that when mr.broderick asked carolt a question "I guess there is something wrong with the market when professional people like you cannot afford to buy a home.", !!!!!! answered it as though it was directed at him?

It does make one rather wonder if the person sat at home using the carolt/!!!!!!? usernames got a bit mixed up and answered with the wrong logon? It's make sense as to why !!!!!! always jumps to carolt's defense.

I posted the following on another thread before I posted on this one:

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

There were rumours a while ago that both carolt and !!!!!!? used multiple users to back up their arguments and to give themselves 'thanks'. I can understand doing that if you have insecurity issues or simply cannot win discussions by the weight of your arguments/intelligence, but it's still a little sad. Not a bad tactic though because the person you're attacking suddenly sees 4 or 5 people against him and starts to falter (not me though, I'm too self confident ). Someone pointed out that a lot of !!!!!!'s 'supporters' were quite new to the forum and all had similar writing styles and made the same spelling and grammatical errors as !!!!!!.

It has also been noted that !!!!!! seems to jump to carolt's defence at every opportunity, which makes one wonder if either !!!!!! is scanning for carols posts (worrying), reads every single thread and post made on the Housing forum (sad), has an amazing skill where he simply 'stumbles' across EVERY post where she is getting attacked (unlikely) or finally that when carolt is attacked, she logs on as !!!!!! and defends herself (who knows). Actually, another alternative is that she PMs !!!!!! and he comes running (birth of a love affaire?)

I did think that mewbie was a 'flag of convenience', but s/he seems to post quite a bit so I changed my view to thinking that mewbie is a new username for a regular who had a lot of baggage and wanted to make a fresh start. I speculated that mewbie was squatnow (who now seems to have vanished) but you can never really be sure unless you're a mod and check out their IP addresses.

Very apt really, especially as mewbie made the very funny 'lots of new posters, gmail must be working overtime' comment.

It almost makes one wonder if there are really only 5 people really posting on MSE with the rest being carolt/!!!!!!'s 'thanks buddies'. :rotfl:

p.s. I'm so convinced that carolt and !!!!!! are 'two cheeks of the same ar se', that I'll refer to them as 'carolt/!!!!!!' from now on, in a similar way that the loyalists used to say 'Sinnfein/IRA' to remind people that they were the same organisation.

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Feel free to delude yourself any way you like.

Thanks for yet another valuable contribution to the debate about house price falls, by the way :rotfl:

Ditto from me too (I guess I'm one of !!!!!!? thanking buddies) DD have you forgotten to take your tablets again?

posh*spice wrote: »

Ditto from me too (I guess I'm one of !!!!!!? thanking buddies) DD have you forgotten to take your tablets again?

I only ask because sometimes you seem to make really interesting logical postings and then you seem to go abit mental and start screaming at everyone?