1st Anniversary: HPC: Did you warn us? Where are your proudest postings?

John_Pierpoint

Some people saw the “house price crash” coming before I did, or saw more clearly than I did how it would turn out. Some MSE members were able to challenge and refine their at times simplistic reasoning, while disbelieving it in their hearts. They too played their part, I would like to think, in helping put this country back on the road to reality.

This list jamescremond posted recently, acts as a role of honour, naming those who investigated the potential disaster, before it became fashionably mainstream in the media:

the lucidity of “!!!!!!/dopester”

the prescience of “carolt”,

the humanitarianism of “ndgirl”

the whimsical jocularity of “brodders”,

the engaging incredulity of “d/dad/ dan”,

the brutal frankness of “brit1234”

the supressed bitterness of “pickles”,

the pleasant understatement of “pastures”.

Can I add “doozergirl” for services to fraud prevention?

I have not got the time to mine the old thread(s) to find the best postings or the start of the most creative threads. These two look like fertile ground for this year’s most accurate and thought provoking postings.

50% House Price Falls
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=551082

Northern Rock
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=524407

If you can remember your best posting or nominate someone else’s posting; please put a quote, comment and link on this thread.

skap7309

Good idea and well done for the 'usual suspects'.

I do remember when the HPC was teetering on the brink and mass chaos ensued as to who was right in wether it was going to happen. The bulls famously repeated the following -

Supply over demand - Now 15 or more houses per buyer on market / around 1 million empty houses around the country
Low unemployment - Now rising fast with the worst yet to come.
Relatively low living costs - Record gas/electricity/fuel/food prices anyone?
Low inflation - Now stands at 4.1% with future hyper-inflation a possibility
Huge levels of immigration topping up prices - Immigration falling fast as no-one wants to join our sinking ship
Recession - You would have been reported to the funny farm if you had mentioned this 12 months ago - now very much underway.

How things change.......and very quickly.

Generali

I was quite pleased with this from March 2007:

Generali wrote: »

Banks care a lot about risk. If house prices fall we'll probably see a credit crunch coupled with a liquidity crisis.

In a liquidity crisis, cash is all. Nobody will extend credit to you.

Look at it fromt he banks' point of view.

If house prices are rising rapidly and interest rates are low, why not lend 5x salary? If the NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) can't pay you back, it's ok. Just reposess and sell the house at a profit. The bank gets their money and lost interest back. Hell, it probably won't even come to that - when the schmuck that crippled himself because he lied on a self cert mortgage realises his mistake he'll sell out cheaply and pay the bank back.

On the other hand, if prices are falling what happens? Who wants to lend someone money against a depreciating asset? You need a big deposit and a big cushion. The banks definitely don't want to think about reposession when they are then going to be holding an asset that's falling in value so they only lend to the least likely to default and make them take out insurance against job loss and death.

If you want to know what a banker's thinking, it's all about how to reduce risk.

WTF?_2

skap7309 wrote: »

Good idea and well done for the 'usual suspects'.

I do remember when the HPC was teetering on the brink and mass chaos ensued as to who was right in wether it was going to happen. The bulls famously repeated the following -

Supply over demand - Now 15 or more houses per buyer on market / around 1 million empty houses around the country
Low unemployment - Now rising fast with the worst yet to come.
Relatively low living costs - Record gas/electricity/fuel/food prices anyone?
Low inflation - Now stands at 4.4% with no sign of let up, also a massive 2.4% above government targets
Huge levels of immigration topping up prices - Immigration falling fast as no-one wants to join our sinking ship
Recession - You would have been reported to the funny farm if you had mentioned this12 months ago - now very much a reality.

How things change.......and very quickly.

Yes - and if you believe some, it's all because some of us on this board started trying to warn other people about it a year or more ago!

Apparently having the presence of mind to see this coming and doing their best to give other people advance warning equates to causing it, or at least 'cheering it on' somehow in the minds of certain posters. I wonder if they would have been on the titanic, would they have been telling everyone that the people saying 'get off before the ship sinks' were doom mongers and secretly looking forward to the ship going down? The mind boggles!


I remember the arguments going on this time last year with some posters who were urging FTBs to get onto the house ladder before it was too late. Unbelievable. I hope they are happy with the misery that is inevitably going to be heaped on recent FTBs.

mewbie_2

I was fairly accurate with this from January 2005

mewbie_12/01/2005 wrote:

I expect house prices to start falling from June 2007. I also think Theo Walcott will come good in about September 2008, possibly even scoring a hat-trick!

Generali

mewbie wrote: »

I was fairly accurate with this from January 2005

Just a year out on the footie prediction but well done anyway!

HammersFan

mewbie wrote: »

I was fairly accurate with this from January 2005

That was your Dolce Vita days. You get more like your old alias everyday. That isn't a good thing.

dopester

My pride is reflected in the total balance of my savings accounts, from genuine real work of some commerical value.

I'm not claiming to be a guru, but it still takes some wisdom to be on the side which can see and recognise the bad times coming - when others really believed property would continue to double every 7 years and prices wouldn't crash.

And justification I was ignoring and repel a mixture of disbelief, pity, and ridicule from the HPI masses that I hadn't joined them as a home-owner or BTL merchant in the final orbital boost of the boom these past few years.

The way the UK has been run these past 4 to 10 years... is like a bad trip. How the hell does it work.... selling houses and ever more crazy prices, when wages didn't follow. I'll admit I didn't know the extent the exotic but flawed financial vehicles which has allowed for the easy credit boom was causing the huge inflows of easy money..

However I always expected some "event" or "trigger" to cause the reversal from finance books I've read about bubbles.

The manic phase of the boom lasts for several years. Properties come to sell at absurd prices on the expectation that they will appreciate to still more absurd prices. And they do. They defy gravity, moving from one lofty high to another, month after month, year after year, long enough to lure otherwise prudent people in to mortgaging their gains to reinvest in the inflated assets on margin.

Before the market can top, near enough everyone who could conceivably be drawn in must have already become a buyer. And debt levels supporting the asset prices must be many times higher than any that could conceivably be serviced out of the cash flow yielded by the investments themselves.

Then comes the bust. Just as everyone has come to count on the idea that lofty asset values are permanent, there is a crash.

kennyboy66_2

Keep the smug posts coming........

WTF?_2

kennyboy66 wrote: »

Keep the smug posts coming........

This board is supposed to be about being sensible with your cash. Stories of how people have been careful with their money and are placed to benefit from their commonsense approach to money management are very welcome to me, anyway.

Certainly a lot more welcome than bitter personal barbs.......

Get with the new feeling of Glasnost on this board and contribute something.

steadysaver

I finished uni in the summer of 2006, with a good job in the bag, and the benifit of living at home, I was quids in.

My plan was to save for a year and buy in the summer of 2007 . After starting to look around I thought crap my deposit won't go far and the cost of houses are ridiculous. Luckily I was in no hurry to buy.

Fast forward a few months and I found this website. After doing plenty of research and reading some insightful posts I decided to postpone a house purchase.

I even tried to tell my family of the possibility of a crash.... the general response was..... its different this time.

So I don't have a memorable thread, however I probably owe a thanks to the people who opened up my eyes to the wider finanical implications of the world. (i.e. most of the sane people on the housing board).