'Property !!!!!! Experts: where are you?' blog discussion 8 September 2008 at 10:57AM in Martin's blogs & appearances & MoneySavingExpert in the news 19 replies 3.8K views

Former_MSE_Lawrence

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's 'Property !!!!!! Experts: where are you?' Blog.

Click reply to discuss below.

d31b0y

it wasn't just the property !!!!!! "experts" in cloud cuckoo land either, this from a building society predicting that in London first time buyer homes will cost £1m by 2018
http://www.stroudandswindon.co.uk/one_million_pound_first_time_buyer_home_pr136.aspx

based on that same broken logic, my own "shocking research" reveals that if house prices continue to follow the current crash trend*

Then by 2018 first time buyer homes in London will be absolutely FREE !

lol

moneybagsuk

Lol, Martin is right as ever, all those property development / buy to let millionaire programmes recorded 12 months ago are starting to look a bit silly now aren't they?

I love looking at the downward trending UK sold house prices graphs on Zoopla for England as well as the counties - you can see the property bubble bursting graphically before your very eyes...

WTF?_2

It's great that Martin is talking about this now but the facts are that about a year ago, people predicting that the market was about to go into decline and warning would-be buyers vocally about the dangers of buying property at that time (August 2007) were almost shoved off the 'House Buying, Renting & Selling' board on MSE.

All talk about property prices falling was confined to a single thread in the hope that it would go away. It didn't, of course,and around last April a 'House Prices' board was started due to demand from members.

So it wasn't just mainstream media that were denying the facts and refusing to accept predictions - it happened on MSE too!

Errata

Where are all the property !!!!!! pundits ? They're busy developing moneysaving internet sites or taking short sharp debt counselling courses !

MSE_Martin

!!!!!!? wrote: »

It's great that Martin is talking about this now but the facts are that about a year ago, people predicting that the market was about to go into decline and warning would-be buyers vocally about the dangers of buying property at that time (August 2007) were almost shoved off the 'House Buying, Renting & Selling' board on MSE.

All talk about property prices falling was confined to a single thread in the hope that it would go away. It didn't, of course,and around last April a 'House Prices' board was started due to demand from members.

So it wasn't just mainstream media that were denying the facts and refusing to accept predictions - it happened on MSE too!

Thanks for this note, and I understand why you may come to that conclusion, but I think there's some confusion.

The issue you're talking about has nothing to do with the sites view on house prices. It is to do with the behaviour and organisation of the forums.

Sadly almost any discussion on homes and mortgages was swamped with house price discussion to the detriment of people needing help. We had huge duplication of topics and posts and wanted to try and make it easier for people to use the forum.

My own view, and by definition the view of the main site, has been on about house prices for years. Here's the first three blogs I came across...

• When did home ownership become a right (MAY 05)
• A nation hypnotised by property !!!!!! (SEPT 06)
• If I hear renting is just throwing money away (NOV 06)

I'm not sure how writing this in one of the highest profile part of the site and inclusion in the weekly email that goes to millions can quite count as hiding it. You'll also see from one of the blogs a link to when I ranted about this on BBC TV in 2006.

I hope that clears it up.

Martin

PS please can we NOT continue the debate here, lets stick to the main issue of the blog rather than discussing forum policy

freeliving

Well they're probably laughing all the way to their bank, (talking of which, if you haven't already, take a look at this site talks about why current money system doesn't work and NEVER will http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/ u can watch their dvd on utube or buy theirs
who knows maybe they were bank sponsored programs ^^ :P and the presenters got throw backs??

time for us all to wake up... we'll be slaves to the banks till the day we die there just isn't enough money in the system to pay back all the money we owe including the banks interest - it's time to break the system stay out of debt

Have fun, work less, play more

setmefree2

freeliving wrote: »

time for us all to wake up... we'll be slaves to the banks till the day we die there just isn't enough money in the system to pay back all the money we owe including the banks interest - it's time to break the system stay out of debt

Have fun, work less, play more

Hi:hello:,

When I logged on this morning I noticed this:-

"Debt is like fire: a useful tool, but get it wrong and get burnt"

It's one of Martin's little mantras. I'm grateful to the banks who lent us the money we needed to buy our home. Our interest rate has varied from 4.5 to 5.67%, hardly usury. The house we bought had been in someone's family for a 100 years. Maybe it can be in our family for a 100 years and my family will always have a roof over their heads?

Soon we will have all our mortgage offset - only £40k to go.

MY POINT- well sometimes it's necessary to get into debt in order to secure what you want and I'm grateful to the the banks for providing us with this opportunity. I'm a MFW and will have rid of my mortgage asap but debt isn't always bad IMHO.

Regards

SMF2

midflight

"Lol, Martin is right as ever" - MONEYBAGSUK

:rolleyes: Hmmm... Here's what Martin actually said:

The price drops aren’t unexpected, only the timing was difficult to pick. I remember causing a stir on Vine (BBC Radio 2) about a year ago, saying “there’s going to be a house price crash”, but then explaining “these things are cyclical, there’ll definitely be a crash, I just don’t know whether it’ll be in one year, two, five, ten or twenty.”

Did that really cause such a stir!?!? I honestly don't know anyone who wasn't expected some kind of serious house price correction. Everyone's been banging on about it for at least 2 years before it started to happen, and the indications have been obvious for even longer. Even Mystic Meg could have seen this coming.

If that's all it takes to be able to say "I told you so", then in that case I'd like to drop a similarly prophetic bombshell by predicting:

THERE WILL ABSOLUTELY 100% DEFINITELY BE A SERIOUS MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK IN THE UK, IN WHICH HUNDREDS OF LIVES WILL BE LOST!!! (I'm just not sure if it will be in the next one year, two, five, ten or TWENTY)

Please don't say I didn't warn you...

pathfinder2

That was the problem though, no one believed that there would ever be a house price correction, ever. The TV pundits didn't do anything to dispel that notion either, they kept urging people to buy now, before prices went up again. It was painful to watch and people would not listen to anyone that had a negative opinion on house prices.

A crash was bound to happen but when no one quite new. I remember telling my friends in 2004 that prices were too high and they would crash very soon, and then they went up for the next three years. Fundamentally I was right, but you try telling that to panic stricken buyers, piling in to bid £200,000 for a broom cupboard in Kensington.

When will the recovery start? My money's on 2013-14. But it all depends on the severity of the slump, Japan still hasn't recovered 18 years after theirs.

moanymoany

The writing was on the wall last year for anyone to see. I thought the decline would be slow and we did our house up and put it on the market at the end of February. By the end of March it was clearly falling fast so we knocked money off the price and sold it for 8% less than the original price.

It was amazing how many people said we were mad - even the EA said it was too much. Our buyer had sold at the peak in '07 and completed in 4 weeks. When we went to thank our EA - who had been fantastic -they told us we had been on the ball and had been right.