This is bizarre. An interest rate cut is expected soon and houses are not selling...

mark101

I’m not surprised property isn’t selling…. A house has gone on for sale recently where I am.

The SELLER & the ESTATE Agent must be having a LAUGH. They are still trying to flog way over priced property without taking any notice of what’s going on.

There is no way on earth is it worth 389K – I see that property never selling at that price.

DirectDebacle

Well as the saying goes, money is. But some people obsess with what a house is worth and nothing else seems to enter into the equation. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Assuming you can afford a property then the price is irrelevant as you shouldn't be trying to buy things that you cannot afford or do not see as value for money.

My view on property ownership is that the value of a property where I will live for many years is much more subjective than £.s.d.

Is it 'nice'. Do I get a good feeling when I walk through the door. Is the area to my taste. Will my neighbours potentially be my sort of people and all manner of other criteria which you can't put a price on but are in thenselves of equal or greater value. Have you ever felt that a house has 'bought you' rather than the other way round?

Whether you buy or rent we all need a roof over our heads. Buying potentially gives you greater choice in ticking the boxes that are important to you.

The fact that house prices are tumbling at the moment should not alarm those people who bought sensibly (at whatever price) in the first place. Those that are forced to sell whether through their own fault or not, will be disadvantaged. That has always been true whether the economy has been growing or in recession. The worst hit will be those that lose their jobs or for other reasons cannot meet their payments. The latter applies in the main to those who did not purchase sensibly. I feel sorry for those that lose their jobs. Including bank employees who in the main, are not fat cats or dealing room whizz kids.

I see an eventual flattening of prices at a level that is affordable in accordance with average incomes. This will be reinforced by a wholesale change in approach by lenders to lending and accompanied by a reciprocal attitude towards debt by borrowers. Restraint and responsibility will hopefully reign.

There needs to be a strengthening of our social housing. I wonder whatever happened to the council house sale receipts that the councils were not allowed to spend. I hope they are not in an Icelandic bank. If they have not been squandered then now is the time to release them and start once again building affordable social housing for those that cannot afford or choose not to buy their own property. I would argue that this form of Govt. spending would be a welcome move in 'spending' our way out of a recession.

Sorry to bang on but high house prices are not good. It means the average person has to spend such a high proportion of their disposable income to house themselves. They then have less money to spend in the rest of the economy. House price inflation really only benefits developers, solicitors, surveyors and estate agents. Their fees are often commission based and like to see fees rise 10% per annum or more , for doing the same work. The lenders like it too as you have to borrow more and we all know where that led us.

There is no way on earth is it worth 389K – I see that property never selling at that price.

So who really cares, apart from the seller what it goes for. It will sell for whatever the market rate is, which is whatever anyone is prepared to pay for it. As it is around 15x the average income, commonsense tells me it must be pretty damned special. But whenever did anything as mundane as commonsense ever come to play in the U.K. property market.