UK prices to plunge like the US

setmefree2

hearts wrote: »

Also the US is massive. A lot of these houses are built far from the cities and are in areas that cannot be compared to the UK in general. Prices here for houses in areas without employers to sustain the communites have always been lower and will be the worst hit.

Agree - it's impossible to compare the UK housing market with the US. A fairer comparison would be the EU versus the US.

setmefree2

sympatex wrote: »

setmefree2, you're getting dangerously close to the under supply over demand for housing argument there. You'll get slapped down!

Point is valid but i think current indications of loads of houses standing empty as the owners can't sell or rent it lowers that arguments validity.

There's also debate over whether the government can do anything to stop the economic cycle, it would be a first. They can ease it as best they can but it will come at a cost for someone else.

Firstly, I'm not scared of being slapped down:D. If you only deal in fact you have nothing to fear.;)

So, where are all these houses lying empty in the UK? If you read Shiller's (or any other) book then you will understand the sheer scale of the overbuilding in the US. I'm sorry it doesn't even compare to the UK. Fact.

setmefree2

brit1234 wrote: »

I think it will be with the massively rising defaults in the buy to let sector. Remember in the UK we never had a shortage of property we had a shortage of affordable property caused by the credit bubble. During this socalled shortage papers were full of 100,000s of properties for sale. Investors were buying up first time buyer properties pushing the prices up beyound the reach of ftb. Now we have 15 sellers for everyone buyer and buy to let fraud is being clamped down on.

We have also a far bigger housing bubble than the US so have farther and faster to fall.

The fact that there was possibly an oversupply of flats, does not mean there was oversupply of houses and it's houses that people want. There is still strong demand for houses in the UK IMHO and not enough of them were built in the boom. Most councils encouraged the building of flats through their planning rules. Therefore, there is still a fundemental strong demand for houses, it hasn't gone away.

Again, I can only repeat that the US built more houses than they had people to buy them. The UK has not built more houses than there are are people who want them. We are still short of good housing because of the pressure of restricting green belt building.

If there was no demand in the UK for houses, there would be no posters on this board. Everyone would have a house.

setmefree2

ad9898 wrote: »

Thousands of flats all round the country are empty, never mind sell them, they can't even rent them out.

Another load of crap pedaled by Clown.

Most people don't want to live in flats, they want a house.

Personally, I don't remember Gordon Brown making a speech on BTLs, so I don't know how you can blame him for whatever it is you are blaming him for. I fail to see how you can blame Gordon Brown for people deciding to become a LL.

setmefree2

For anyone who is interested I have just checked Shiller's book "The subprime solution" and it offers NO analysis of the UK housing market. It references the UK 3 times - pgs8, 153 and 166.

Page 8 - mentions NR fleetingly.
Page 153 - talks about the developing of indexes
Page 166 - discusses unemployent insurance introduced by Lloyd George in 1911

There is no detailed analysis of the UK housing market in this book.