Homes go for £800 - could it happen here?

iltisman

The cheapest houses in the UK I have ever seen were in Hull in 1980.The ads in the local paper read "£400 and buyer does the paperwork". I suppose you could have been really hard faced and tried to get 15% off.

_Andy_

Or how about $1?

http://realtytribune.com/uncategorized/midwest-realty/foreclosure-fallout-detroit-houses-go-for-a-1_317

abaxas

Anyone here a Geordie?

In the early 90's, property in parts of the west end had negative value. IE people wouldnt actually give them away.

Will we see it again. Looking at parts of the west end, I'd assume it wont be too many months off.

Max_Headroom_3

mewbie wrote: »

Not so sure. New build flats in some areas mostly empty. Can't sell. Can't rent out. Estate can't afford basic maintenance - lifts, etc. What's it worth?

Actually, that's a rather good point, not thought of that...

Gorgeous_George

Even if houses in the North became worthless overnight, they wouldn't have lost as much as houses in 'affluent' areas.

100% of £80K is less than 40% of £250K or 10% of £1M.

Most houses have a rentable value. I think that they are generally 'worth' 100 x monthly rent.

At £1,000 it would be worth buying a street and knocking them down. The land will be worth something again one day.

The world is much smaller these days. Many businesses can be run from home. I think the gap between North and South will diminish in future.

GG

GDB2222

People are forgetting the rather odd Housing Benefit system in this country, using reference rents over a rather large area. That means that a £400 house can get £10k a year in rent. Once that point sunk in, the houses stopped being only worth £400.

carolt

But surely only once you can actually get someone to live in it?

GDB2222

True, but there were lots of refugees looking for places at the time, I thought? I'm thinking about the streets in Manchester that suddenly got bought up about 10 years ago. I'm a Londoner, so I'm hazy about the details.

If the rent is high enough, it makes sense to do up the houses enough to rent them out.

dopester

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

At £1,000 it would be worth buying a street and knocking them down. The land will be worth something again one day.

I wish I could find the article (looked repeatedly over weeks), but it highlighted the costs and risks of holding property over time when there is no boom on.

You might have to keep it insured, someone might dump toxic waste on it in the middle of the night, all sorts of risks.

Not to mention opportunity cost where the investment can work harder for returns in other sectors rather than stagnating in some demolished bit of land that has crashed in value and no one has current use for.

PasturesNew

It was always a "you needed money first" game though.
BTL took off because people could raise 2nd mortgages on their existing houses so easily.

It's unfortunate that those with nothing can still get nothing, even when stuff is silly cheap, simply because they can't raise the extra money they'd need to do it up.

Cheap/liar loans changed that for those that were aware they existed. And even though it seems everybody was at it, it wasn't really.

The more you have, the more you can get. Some things never change.

I wouldn't buy a house at £1000, do it up etc etc. It just doesn't appeal.