Fool: Who Can You Trust On House Prices?

neverdespairgirl

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of people on this forum that go on about the 'huge levels of MEWing' and start slavering at the thought of all those 'idiots funding a lifestyle they can't afford' getting into negative equity, but is there really any way to calculate how much of this type of MEWing has occured?

I'm not sure of any definite way to measure it (ask someone who knows a lot more than I do about the mortgage market) but you do see references to MEW-ing on the mortgage board.

neverdespairgirl

ali007 wrote: »

Whereas I'm 'obviously hard up' because my car is over 4 years old....

Blimey, they must think our 11 year old Fiat means we are on the breadline.

neverdespairgirl

GDB2222 wrote: »

We have 5 kids, and at one time we had a Peugeot 505 Family Estate (one of those ones with 3 rows of seats).

They were great. I'm one of 4, and my parents had a 505 for years and years, it was a really good car. Much better than the huge people carriers you seem to have to buy now for a big family.

Just before I started uni, I borrowed my mother's 505 and went on a camping trip to France with 5 mates, which was wonderful (and very cheap!)

WTF?_2

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Blimey, they must think our 11 year old Fiat means we are on the breadline.

My car is 12 years old. It does around 55-60mpg on average, can run on veggie oil (well, have tried it up to 50% concentration but veg oil is as expensive as diesel these days) and has enough dings and minor rust spots already that I don't ever feel worried about leaving it in a car park or on the street in case it gets knocked or scratched.

Plus, no-one gives it a second look so I never worry about anyone nicking it.

It'll do 80mph on the motorway no problems and I occasionally will do 400 mile round trips in it, no worries.

Fully depreciated so when I come to buy a new motor, no messing around with part exchange. I'll just go to the dealer with 'cash in the bank' and a car that I want to buy and let him decide whether or not to accept my offer

Planning on doing so next spring/summer. I figure there should be some good automotive bargains around by then.......

Brainache

Part of the reason for the difference could be the biases inherent in the indices. The Nationwide and Halifax indices take information from their own mortgage approvals and now that the Halifax in particular is being more careful about its lending and taking a smaller percentage of the market than usual, this could be distorting its figures. Additionally, all the other indices include transactions which don’t involve mortgages, which normally represent somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of all deals.
...
In time these differences should iron themselves out and in a few months we’ll be able to compare the indices based on completions with the current leading indicators to get a better idea of what’s happening. Of course, if you’re looking to buy or sell at the moment that’s not much comfort. Personally, I suspect it’s the Halifax and, to a lesser extent, the Nationwide indices that are ones out of kilter but that’s little more than a barely educated guess.

That's the second article I've read saying something like this, both published on sites which claim some level of financial expertise. It's simply WRONG!! The major reason for the differences between the indicies is the relative time lag in publishing the data; the Land Reg stats are approx 3-4 months behind the Halifax/Nationwide indicies. LR has went YoY negative in August, Haliwide in April - a 4 month lag.

neverdespairgirl

!!!!!!? wrote: »

My car is 12 years old.

Ours is about the same - R reg Fiat. Worth almost nothing, I assume, but good MPG and very reliable, and cheap to service.