Nationwide +1.3 (-6.2 YoY)

ad9898_3

Dr_DiNg_DoNg wrote: »

It has amazed me how resilient the housing market is, 6% is nothing in the scheme of things, and it looks like the doomsters will miss the boat again.

I think most of the doomsters can buy at the drop of a hat, the ones that can't have no choice but to miss the boat. I don't know anyone who had the chance to buy but didn't and then were priced out, most people who miss it are too young to buy.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

The debate is over.

Prices today are now 7.5% higher than they were in the trough of February 2009.

There may well be further small monthly declines over winter, but it now looks like we are past the absolute trough. This was not a bull trap, but rather the beginning of recovery, or at least the bump along the bottom phase. It will be equally appropriate to describe the coming winter falls or stagnation as a bear trap.

The fundamental underlying issue is, and has always been, supply and demand. There are not enough houses, of a type people want to live in, in the places people want to live, and where the employment exists to support them. And the shortage is increasing, and can only get worse.

Prices will recover much faster than last time, because the shortage is much worse than last time. I have repeatedly posted that this crash/recovery will be much faster than the previous one, that it is being time-compressed. This is becoming clearer every day.

And in even more great news, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over on hpc today.:T

PasturesNew

The truth is, we won't know until 2012 what just happened...

ruggedtoast

Timmberrrr...

Oh wait. Sorry, I'm in the wrong thread.

Really2

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Timmberrrr...

Oh wait. Sorry, I'm in the wrong thread.

Great minds think alike (even if one is a little quicker:));)

Lotus-eater

It's pretty cool isn't it? House prices are on their way up again, we are going to be in another house price boom soon, no matter what the economy is doing.
I've considered this, this morning and am wondering if we are going to have another spike in the figure before we really get that prices are too high, or maybe some of those on here are right and we really are in a new age of permanently high prices.
Something in my head tells me to keep quiet and keep the faith that prices will go down, (not that I'm worried about it) maybe that will be in 2 months, maybe that will be in 12 months after all of the steam of QE and cash injection's into the economy run out.
Yet also we have little house building which will push the prices higher.

No doubt at the moment prices are going up, for how long?

ad9898_3

Really2 wrote: »

Mainy that the big falls have happened and the falls going forward will mainly be in "real terms" not nominal.

Mmmm, not sure about that, we have no inflation this time around like the last crash so if there are no actual falls in house prices, they will be rising. Of course we do have inflation in most things we buy, but wage inflation was quite high in the last crash causing this 'period of stagnation' this time there is virtually zero inflation in wages, in fact there are cuts, so in real terms if house prices rise lets say 4% p.a. in real terms that will be more like 6-7%.

I guess what I'm trying to say (not very well) is in the last crash prices ever so slowly trended downwards for the last 3-4 years of the slump because of wage inflation, this time the 'stagnation' will ever so slowly trend upwards because there is zero wage inflation.

System

ad9898 wrote: »

At this rate on a national level we will be back to 2007 prices by Spring 2010, with mortgage approvals following suit,

Ah come on now you now that's not true.

Really2

ad9898 wrote: »

I guess what I'm trying to say (not very well) is in the last crash prices ever so slowly trended downwards for the last 3-4 years of the slump because of wage inflation, this time the 'stagnation' will ever so slowly trend upwards because there is zero wage inflation.

Who knows, I think at the moment though wage inflation is still higher than CPI and for certain RPI.

I t' was just a coment based at looking at the "real price" graph on the nation wide it now looks very similar (but I to do belive things are very different to the 90's)

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

UK families to be crammed into ever smaller spaces or will the coming pensions crisis force baby boomers to sell at lower prices and move into smaller properties? My bets are on the latter but time, as ever, will tell...

The thing is, if baby boomers downsize, this increases the demand on the lower rungs of the property ladder, competing potentially with FTBers.
you could see an increase in lower priced properties.

Assuming also that this increased supply of the higher priced properties that they are to downsize from, the question will be if there is enough demand from upsizers, thus higher priced properties may not increase by the same percentage thus potentialy closing the gap between the rungs.

One other potential as we have seen in recent years is for the baby boomer generation to sell their property but remain living within it to one of those schemes. this could inturn spread out the supply of houses and reduce the demand on lower priced properties

Who knows, as you say, time will tell.