Number Of People Buying Homes Jumps 29%

chucky

dopester wrote: »

Ok Chucky. I'll accept that response and the proven historical evidence you've got to back it up.

We differ only in expectations for values and recovery. I think this is the recovery (values falling).

we probably do differ in expectations for values and recovery on a national average level but i don't think that we would be too far apart.

confused31 wrote: »

House prices will always recover and i agree with this, it may be slow but they will recover its just waiting for house prices to hit the bottom first.:rolleyes:

i think some locations have hit or are very near the bottom - others won't bottom out for another 12-18 months due to the economic instability and the fragility of their local housing market for example reliance on local industry and local jobs, areas that has crazy affordibilty averages like Northern Ireland.

Edale

Check here
Number of loans for house purchase:
March 2007 89,000
March 2008 46,500
March 2009 31,000

Make up your own mind how good this news is.

IveSeenTheLight

ad9898 wrote: »

Come on dude, the answer is easy, it's f**k all.:D

Sorry, ad, you've failed your arithmatic exam.
The answer would of course had been 29/100 f**k all

the_ash_and_the_oak

dopester wrote: »

Rates for existing borrowers should not shoot up.

If you're looking for existing home-owners to be pressured in to paying very high rates of interest on their mortgages in this economic climate, just to further the crash, so more of them lose their homes... it is a bit overly focused on your own ambitions to get a cheap home.

There is quite a lot of supply. As buyers we don't need people losing their homes by very high interest rates to further our own ends. The economy comes first.

Existing homeowners are already selling their homes for lower prices, month after month. That is why the values of all homes fall for all. The supply is there, and people will eventually sell at lower values, year after year. We don't need individuals and families broken by penal rates of interest, just to increase what is on the market at cheaper values. Values will and are plummeting anyway.

think both you and confused31 are correct here btw.

dont think the impetus from the crash is coming - or will come - from distressed current owners - esp now measures have been put in place to reduce forced sales as much as poss (thereby reducing) supply - drops reduced in magnitude once these measures were put in place.

increased rates when they come will not put pressure so much on existing owners - who are already in many cases the beneficiaries of cheaper loans than new entrants to market. increased rates when they come will reduce the amount that new entrants are able to borrow - reducing the amount they will be able to offer. this is when the pressure from higher rates will bring down prices further imo

Generali

Month-on-month changes are pretty much meaningless. More houses sell in the spring so we'd expect to see more mortgages sold in early spring than in winter.

As Edale rightly points out, the figures are massively down year-on-year and are a very long way short of the 70,000 mortgage completions that I believe to be the minimum consistent with rising house prices in the UK.

The figures are consistent with what anecdotes and data tell us - people are losing their jobs and others are feeling insecure about their finances. And the banks are either unable or unwilling to lend to any but the very safest risks.

As the UK Government is determined to borrow a huge amount of money this year and next and are still deemed a very good risk by the bond market, the UK Government will crowd out a huge amount of private borrowing and will continue to do so until their budget approaches balance.

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Month-on-month changes are pretty much meaningless. More houses sell in the spring so we'd expect to see more mortgages sold in early spring than in winter.

We understand this, however what I do not understand is the seasonal adjustment of the indexes at this time.

As others have said, houses are set at the margins i.e. the more house sold for less, the more inclined the next house price will be lower. Similarly this is partly why house prices rose so much in the boom time.

Yet the seasonal adjustment is still showing an expectation that house prices go up in spring, potentially showing the adjustment is still set for a rising market and not a falling one.
You would have thought there would be a change to the seasonal adjustment for a falling market.

I can only think that the reason why the seasonal adjustment is still for house prices to go higher, and as we have seen in the last two months
(Nationwide figures), is that the adjustment is because of higher sales, meaning higher demand and more competition for the same supply.

Kind of brings it back to the supply and demand theory

zappahey

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Yet the seasonal adjustment is still showing an expectation that house prices go up in spring, potentially showing the adjustment is still set for a rising market and not a falling one.
You would have thought there would be a change to the seasonal adjustment for a falling market.

<Idle speculation mode>

It seems to me that the seasonal adjustment simply reflects that, regardless of market conditions, Spring is when most people who choose to move start looking to buy and sell houses so the market is a bit more firm.

At other times of the year it is more likely to be those with a need to move due to job changes etc. and may take a slightly lower price as a result.

It's much like the car market where good deals were hard to find when it was time for the new number plates but bargains can be found the rest of the year.

Generali

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

We understand this, however what I do not understand is the seasonal adjustment of the indexes at this time.

As others have said, houses are set at the margins i.e. the more house sold for less, the more inclined the next house price will be lower. Similarly this is partly why house prices rose so much in the boom time.

Yet the seasonal adjustment is still showing an expectation that house prices go up in spring, potentially showing the adjustment is still set for a rising market and not a falling one.
You would have thought there would be a change to the seasonal adjustment for a falling market.

I can only think that the reason why the seasonal adjustment is still for house prices to go higher, and as we have seen in the last two months
(Nationwide figures), is that the adjustment is because of higher sales, meaning higher demand and more competition for the same supply.

Kind of brings it back to the supply and demand theory

Well prices in a free (or free-ish) market can only be set by supply and demand as there really isn't anything else.

Price discovery in the housing market is a different matter as there are some features of the housing market that make it very unusual, most importantly each house is different (albeit subtly sometimes).

I have my doubts about the accuracy of the current Haliwide indices given the dramatic fall in volumes causing problems creating a statistically valid sample.

Also, I'd be very careful about using Month on Month data. Year on year or at least 3 months on 3 months is much better. MoM is too easily swayed by silly things like whether there's 4 or 5 weekends in a month.