Listen to the experts DAMNIT!!!!

Pobby

I was part of the SAS ( spending and soa ) and was secretly dropped by parachute at Peenemuende. It was there that I spied on the new bullish secret weapon, The Moderator. I warned that Mods not only go up, they also come down ( like a ton of bricks). Secret despatches revealed that over a short spell many bears were wiped out. I believe that the young, dashing Captain Nelly was one such victim.

the_ash_and_the_oak

Agree its about timing of course. I think STR is a good decision though and we discussed it with my grandparents and they did it at the end of 2004. I am well aware this is a little 'early' but I know that tops of markets are not like bottoms of markets and that once it turned selling gets a little tougher.

Could they have got more if they had waited? Of course! But we weren't confident about timing it precisely by any means! But its worked out pretty well for them so far, they are now able to live by the sea and the rent is cheap and has been covered by the interest (having to look a bit more closely at this with recent developments tho!)

Yes, with the drawn out process of price drops, if they are going to wait to buy back in they probably have to wait a while longer (I think they are prob around a break even point if they were to buy back in now) and if it was say 2010 then 6 years is a long time to wait. But they don't really look at it like that now, they're not sitting on the sidelines waiting, they've enjoyed renting somewhere for 'free' that would have prob been out of their price range to buy, and I think they've also enjoyed not having to worry about repairs etc about their age. Its also given them a little bit more room to manouvre financially. Now of course there is something of a concern regarding interest rates so a good decision yesterday can easily become a bad decision today (if they were not reliant on interest to pay rent this wouldnt really matter so much). Nevertheless I still consider it to have been a good move financially for them to STR, up to this point at least. I really don't know if they will buy back in at some point or not. I think probably going to wait-and-see for 2009 and 2010 (but more on interest rates than house prices)

besonders1

I think that people who have made money on the boom years are just lucky. e.g. people who have been left a house from a deceased family member last year and sold at the peak.
If you go out deliberately intending to make money out of plain greed, e.g people who have made a healthy profit on one house sale then went out in late 2007 bought a house at peak prices intending to sell on for even more profit end up with well deserved negative equity.

The golden rule is you can't predict the future, last year no-one ever believed there would be a crash and to get your hands on an old house, its value would only go one way and that is up, better than investing your cash in any savings account. But that was then.

Walter_J

besonders1 wrote: »

The golden rule is you can't predict the future, last year no-one ever believed there would be a crash and to get your hands on an old house, its value would only go one way and that is up, better than investing your cash in any savings account. But that was then.

Oh, come on!

This crash was being widely predicted last year and anyone who entered the housing market then must have been hopelessly blinkered or a total idiot.

Many of us have been predicting the credit crunch and the collapse of the housing market for several years. The only surprise is that it took so long in coming.

Those who chose not to listen are the bigger fools.

Gorgeous_George

besonders1 wrote: »

...The golden rule is you can't predict the future,...

Might as well delete the word 'predict' from the dictionary. Predicting the past and the present is no fun at all - though I get that right most of the time.

GG

illzlee

How many of these 'experts' predicted that the house price bubble would burst and that values would collapse.

None.

Yet thousands of ordinary people have been predicting just that for years

why would the media allow the opinion of experts to get in the way of a good story?

I remember watching the BBC interview a guy in his twenties who had just bought 10+ brand new houses all on BTL mortgages (c.2006) and asking him how it felt to be a "property millionaire". Wonder how he feels now :rotfl:
Probably complaining that no-one told him bubbles could burst:eek: