Is it time to Buy property, bargains?

chucky

ad9898 wrote: »

There are no bargains, not until at least 2010, with 2% per month average price drop, today's bargain is tomorrow's overpriced albatross around your neck.

disagree - there are two different things. buying a house to live in or buying it as an investment.

as an investment you maximise any potential profit.

as a home there are many more factors for different types of property. for example relocation, needing a bigger home for the expanding family and many more other circumstances that people encounter.

prices may drop over 1/2 years, buying a property is usually for a much longer period of time. if you own a property for 30 years how many price drops do you think will happen?

don't ignore the potential price drops but factor them into the longer term view.

ad9898_3

chucky wrote: »

disagree - there are two different things. buying a house to live in or buying it as an investment.

as an investment you maximise any potential profit.

as a home there are many more factors for different types of property. for example relocation, needing a bigger home for the expanding family and many more other circumstances that people encounter.

prices may drop over 1/2 years, buying a property is usually for a much longer period of time. if you own a property for 30 years how many price drops do you think will happen?

don't ignore the potential price drops but factor them into the longer term view.

Yeh you're right chucky, I was being a little pedantic. I guess a lot of people, and this includes me, when answering a question like the OP, you look from you're own perspective, all the things you mention are very relevant to a lot of people, just not me, hence my answer.

This is the problem with an opening post, asking a question like that, most people look at it from their own tunnel visioned point.

chucky

ad9898 wrote: »

Yeh you're right chucky, I was being a little pedantic. I guess a lot of people, and this includes me, when answering a question like the OP, you look from you're own perspective, all the things you mention are very relevant to a lot of people, just not me, hence my answer.

This is the problem with an opening post, asking a question like that, most people look at it from their own tunnel visioned point.

AD, but you've answered the question from your point of view. everyone puts their view across and you can derive your thoughts from other posts in contribution to yours.

the difficuly with an opening post like that is that we do not know their circumstances and their personal situation. for you your strategy is good and will save you a fair amount of cash.

there are some people out there that need to sell, these are the guys you can get a bargain off. even now.

whathavewedone

I agree with the majority who are telling you to wait a bit longer as prices are still falling.

I do have to take exception with Macaque's assertion that properties valued at 500k in the peak were only worth 150k in 2001/2002 and will come down to 120k.

Our house was valued at 440k in the peak, never as much as 500k. It sold in 2000 for 230k and in 2002 it sold for 285k. Don't know when it was only worth 150k but it must have been a lot longer than 7 or 8 years ago.

Not saying that the OP shouldn't wait but he might be waiting a long time if he's holding out for 500k houses to come down to 120k! 200k maybe, that would still be very cheap and a major disaster for anyone that paid between 400 and 500k for their house.

besonders1

I suppose it depends which area of which is being compared e.g. council estate vs private owned affluent areas etc. I find that less desirable areas seem to fall in value quicker than the more nicer sough after locations as everyone wants to live there. At the end of the day no one really knows what the new generation of prices will be but when the bottom is reached, I think we will have more things to worry about like employment crime etc hence the reasons why the prices will be so low

macaque_2

chucky wrote: »

maybe a consensus in your world due to that housepricecrash.com crystal ball that you have.

this "consensus" must be just yourself. to be clear it isn't the end of the world and it isn't armageddon. it's an economic problem that most countries in the world have.

House prices are going to wind themselves back a long way. You don't need a crystal ball to see why. We are in a vicious circle with nervous lenders forcing down house prices (by demanding large deposits). At the same time, private sector jobs and salaries are shrinking. The government have lost a huge slice of income from the private sector and the tax take is plummeting.

The next bomb shell facing us will be related to the UK's credit rating. The pound is sliding and the government will have to stop this if it wants to go on borrowing. Iceland have tackled the same problem by increasing interest rates to 18%.

On the subject of sentiment, you might take the time to watch BBC programme on the 1929 crash. The parallels are spooky.

Whilst many people were praising Gordon Brown for bringing an end to 'boom and bust', realists were saying that the debt bubble would, at some point, collapse with devastating consequences. Your ilk failed to spot this. Even though people like me have been proved right you choose to mock us and claim to know better.

My comments are not crystal ball gazing but common sense. The damage is already there to see. If I see a person hit by a car, I don't need to wait for the bruising to show to realise they are hurt.

StevieJ

With regards to the 1929 crash 'The parallels are spooky' this may be true but the remedy for dealing with it bear little comparison

Common sense, wages back to 1970's levels :rotfl:

chucky

macaque wrote: »

House prices are going to wind themselves back a long way. You don't need a crystal ball to see why. We are in a vicious circle with nervous lenders forcing down house prices (by demanding large deposits). At the same time, private sector jobs and salaries are shrinking. The government have lost a huge slice of income from the private sector and the tax take is plummeting.

The next bomb shell facing us will be related to the UK's credit rating. The pound is sliding and the government will have to stop this if it wants to go on borrowing. Iceland have tackled the same problem by increasing interest rates to 18%.

On the subject of sentiment, you might take the time to watch BBC programme on the 1929 crash. The parallels are spooky.

Whilst many people were praising Gordon Brown for bringing an end to 'boom and bust', realists were saying that the debt bubble would, at some point, collapse with devastating consequences. Your ilk failed to spot this. Even though people like me have been proved right you choose to mock us and claim to know better.

My comments are not crystal ball gazing but common sense. The damage is already there to see. If I see a person hit by a car, I don't need to wait for the bruising to show to realise they are hurt.

tell me who has the perfect economy and we can agree. but even then you'll be telling me about the end of the world in 2012...

and as for my "ilk" - who are they??

"Even though people like me have been proved right" - what does that mean, you deny you have a crystal ball but you can predict the future?

so what did you predict?? you predicted that house prices would drop, you predcited the crdit crunch? you predcited who would win Big Brother??

for your information and it you may have missed it but many. many people (not just you) thought that it would end some time. none of us had your powers to predict a date however...

macaque_2

chucky

tell me who has the perfect economy and we can agree. but even then you'll be telling me about the end of the world in 2012...

No one has the perfect economy but there is a scale of bad. There seems to be a growing concensus that we are in a bigger mess than most others. It would appear that we will be "one of the hardest hit of the 27 EU countries"
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5546863.ece

and as for my "ilk" - who are they??

I apologise sincerely if I have put you in the wrong category. The 'ilk' to which I was referring were the millions of people who either directly or indirectly supported the unsustainable borrowing binge (public and private). I am talking about house flippers, 'bad' BTL landlords, banks and overpaid public sector middle managers, Mewers etc.

"Even though people like me have been proved right" - what does that mean, you deny you have a crystal ball but you can predict the future?

Seeing into the future is not all about crystal ball gazing. Some of it is common sense. If you jump out of an aeroplane, you don't need a crystal ball to work out where you will end up.

so what did you predict?? you predicted that house prices would drop, you predcited the crdit crunch? you predcited who would win Big Brother??

Like many others, I predicted collapsing house prices, a credit crunch and rising unemployment several years ago. What I will admit is that I thought the correction would happen sooner. The severity of the current correction stems from a failure to lance the boil in a timely fashion.

for your information and it you may have missed it but many. many people (not just you) thought that it would end some time. none of us had your powers to predict a date however...

Your words, not mine. I do not have the powers to predict a date. I can only speculate.

dboy1985

Its not just the cost of the house to take into consideration is it. the current stamp duty freeze saves a couple of thousand and the low interest rates means there probably will be low interest fixed rate deals in the near future, remember 150,000 @ 6.5% over a 20 year period will cost 118k in credit, that same amount with 3.5% interest will cost 58k. Total costs of 268k vs 208k; saving 60 thousand over the total period.
What happens if interest rates skyrocket? A three bed house may only cost 80k (personally I don’t see this happening in desirable areas, or without another 20k having to be spent to make it how you want) but if rates were 15% over 20 years you pay 172k in interest....bringing the total cost to 252k, so despite the fact this house has fallen ~50% in value you aren’t paying 50% less in total. So is buying now really stupid when in 6 months time it will probably be a very different market? Just because the majority think x is going to happen doesn’t mean it will. (Don’t get me wrong I think prices will probably go down in the next 6 months, but what other factors may result is paying more over the long term)
I think the big problem a lot of people have on here in particular is they are looking at everything in a vacuum “house prices are going to drop but ill still keep my job and earn 50k/year, the British economy will stay at its current state etc” the reality of it is that if things get so bad as to wipe 50%+off the value of the majority of houses the likihood is you will either not have that job or a massive reduction in your pay. The cost of living may skyrocket as well as hundreds of other variables to take into consideration...dont listen to anyones advice apart from your own, at least then you can take all the credit/blame when the outcome of your actions becomes clear...