Fool: Who Can You Trust On House Prices?

mewbie_2

Mewing. I read a good comment (I thought) about the widespread nature of mewing. It described Sunday morning football matches, and how ten years ago there would be a line up of old saloons and battered vans in the car park. Nowadays there would be more of the 4x4 and Audi TT's, etc. than could possibly be supported by us all getting richer.

Back to topic. Who can I trust? No one of course - from HPC all the way through to an Estate Agent. So it comes from a vague feel of what is happening based on a gut instinct. Plus if the cat circles twice before defecating on the neighbours garden I know to expect another 2% off next month.

sarkin

My guide for house prices is property bee it tells me exactly what is going on in any area and from the data I get if you want to sell you need to slash the price.

Having used the bee since January I would say prices are down at least 10% and if you want to sell take another 10% off.

John_Pierpoint

Nothing new about MEWing.
Back in 1976 I shared an office with a colleague who had got into a mess (cost of bringing up kids on single wage) and was paying his Barclaycard with his Access and vice a versa.
His MEW trebled the size of his mortgage to 6K - those were the days, the baby boomers buying their homes and supporting their lifestyle, with money robbed from their grandparents by inflation.

Dithering_Dad

sarkin wrote: »

Do you remeber the Northern Rock queues not many under 55 from what I could see, but not wanting to fallout with you I except that all your friends are frugal and save regularly.

HI sarkin, no falling out at all - I hope that my post didn't come across that way - I put a ";-)" in there but smilies don't seem to be working today.

I dare say that I must be living in a bubble of sensible pals and close acquaintances. If we talk about money it seems to be just about mortgage overpayment and increased penson contributions and ISA investments to take advantage of the low stockmarket.

Thinking about it, we did get an awful lot of people coming into the Mortgage Free Wannabe forum and arguing about how we were daft for paying off 'the cheapest debt you'll ever have!'. It used to almost be as lively in there as in here, we'd regularly have to sweep up broken glass, tables and chairs after each fight.

They don't seem to be coming in there anymore since mortgages because so expensive and the economy & houseprices went south.

sarkin

DD no worries I see you had a run in with a few forum members, I thought I might be next. You have a unique set of friends all mine are in it upto thier eyeballs

Dithering_Dad

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

sarkin - I think you meant 1.4 trillion, from 500 billion...

DD - fair point. Didn't mean this to be a dig AT MEW'ers. More concerned that Banks&BSocs haven't done their maths in handing out the money...using the wrong index could showup now prices are dropping. Better maths might have put less MEWers in to negative equity so quickly.

re MEW stats, found the links below;

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/mew/2005.htm

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/mew/current/index.htm

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/hew/current/index.htm


MEW in 2005 around £36 billion.
MEW in 2006 around £49 billion.
HEW (presumably named change to confuse the innocent) around £42 billion.

A good chunk of the move to above a trillion...

Thanks for the figures CF. Most enlightening! :eek:

Dithering_Dad

sarkin wrote: »

DD no worries I see you had a run in with a few forum members, I thought I might be next. You have a unique set of friends all mine are in it upto thier eyeballs

Not to dwell on it, but you'll probably notice it's mainly the same one or two members and sometimes their puppy dogs (or additional usernames) that I tend to have run-ins with. I guess some people dont want to hear views from a more positive and optimistic person. They definitely don't like the fact that I can't be pidgeon-holed into either a HPC or a HPI camp - both are meaningless to me, the mortgage debt is the important thing, everything else is immaterial. I'm actually hated by one forum member, which is amazing when you think that this is an anonymous chat forum!! I guess that person needs to spend less time in here and more in the real world. He might then also change his views about 'retards', 'negros' and 'dole dossers'.

As you see from this thread, I'm happy to admit that on this issue I'm probably mistaken and perhaps that most of the country around me is MEWing and spending money like it's going out of fashion. I'm obviously an oasis of prudent and sensible saving.

gallygirl

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

As you see from this thread, I'm happy to admit that on this issue I'm probably mistaken and perhaps that most of the country around me is MEWing and spending money like it's going out of fashion. I'm obviously an oasis of prudent and sensible saving.

DD none of my friends are MEWing either - it's not in their mentality, unfortunately neither is paying off their mortgages early. They do however take out 17% loans to buy new cars....... :eek: . Whereas I'm 'obviously hard up' because my car is over 4 years old....

smartn

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

As you see from this thread, I'm happy to admit that on this issue I'm probably mistaken and perhaps that most of the country around me is MEWing and spending money like it's going out of fashion. I'm obviously an oasis of prudent and sensible saving.

I've been viewing this forum for the past couple of weeks and have finally decided to join in (something I may well regret judging by the amount of fighting that goes on!!). I have read many of your comments and on the whole agree with you. I too am struggling to understand how widespread this massive debt is. I can't be certain, but I reckon most of my friends (forty somethings) all live within there means.

I suppose I am pretty unusual in that I worked hard and managed more through luck than judgment to get a large chunk of my mortgage paid off when I was young (I bought relatively cheaply and invested a lot of time in doing the place up), but even so rented out a room to ensure my mortgage was well covered etc.

To me debt (even if it is cheap debt), is still debt. I hope that however horrible things get (another 2000 unfortunate people working for XL losing there jobs today) that the country as a whole can come out of this stronger and learn from the mistakes that have been made.

I hope my children can benefit from cheaper house prices, because to me the only people getting rich out of the house prices increases were estate agents, lawyers and banks. If people have more money left over at the end of the month through lower house prices and hence lower mortgages then this has got to be a good thing for the majority in the long term.

This doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for all those who have bought in the last couple of years, I really do, but what has been going on is clearly unsustainable and needs to be corrected.

Anyway, I've waffled on quite a bit and expect to be shot down by a few of the forum regulars now but thats life.....

WTF?_2

ad44downey wrote: »

Very true. It's a dark secret to which people are ashamed to admit. i.e. they can't afford to fund their lifestyle and have to go cap in hand to the bank begging for more money.

I dunno about that - being in debt has went from being something shameful when I was a kid (even using HP was frowned upon somewhat) to being a part of everyday life today. Having a mortgage was just about the only form of socially acceptable debt to hold.

Accordingly, people didn't have too much trouble owning up to carrying massive debt. At least, they didn't when times were good, more credit was easily available and existing debt was cheap to service. Maybe as things get tight people will be a bit more reticent to take on debt (if it's even available) and more circumspect about that fact that they're up to their necks in it.