Positioning Yourself to Take Advantage of the Housing Market

carolt

Deleted_User wrote: »

A lot of threads seem to be going around in circles debating whether house prices will continue to rise, stagnate or crash. It's interesting but I thought it might be constructive to share ideas on how to make the situation work for us.

I thought it might be interesting to hear what everyone is doing to take advantage of the situation - whatever they believe that situation to be.

So, if you think house prices will rise what are you doing to make sure you benefit from that (if anything). If you think they'll fall what are you doing to benefit from that?

Or if you already have benefited from the crash and/or subsequent increase in prices then let us hear about it.

Or maybe you were around at the last crash - how well did you come out of it? Did you lose? gain? didn't make any difference to you?

I'm actively doing nothing to take advantage of the situation.

I think prices will fall, and I'm not buying.

I can't actually claim I'm not buying as a result of my beliefs - I'm not buying because we need to be flexible about areas due to moving for schools. So we're not now looking to buy before 2011 at the earliest.

If that wasn't the case, I might buy if I saw something I liked at a reasonable price and could get a mortgage rate that made it attractive compared to renting. If, on the other hand, I didn't find anything I liked at the right price and instead found a nice rental property, I'd rent instead.

I'm more interested in the living that goes on while house prices go up or down - I'm not really interested in focussing my day-to-day life on 'positioning' myself.

Buying a house would be nice, but it's not sufficiently important to focus on to that degree.


Maybe there are others for who it's more vital?

kabayiri

When I bought my first house in the late 80s I think i rushed into it, a panic buy...

All the people around me were whispering the perceived wisdom, how prices could only go up, how I needed to get a foothold now, etc.

So I took the plunge. And you know what? It was a carp move. For a number of reasons I'd have been better off in rented.

The kind of whispering I heard then, and the kind of bull language I hear now, it's like an echo. I think it shows that human nature doesn't change much.

Given that I messed up, would I advise others to jump on the housing ladder while they can? Hell, no. Play the waiting game I say. It's a sad harsh reality that there are going to be a fair number of distressed sellers in months to come. There are home owners who are at their limit, with no safety cushion to fall back on. In recessionary times, these people get washed out of the system. It's happened before, it will happen again. The prudent people, including some on here, will have opportunity to buy houses of real value.

macaque_2

Deleted_User wrote: »

A lot of threads seem to be going around in circles debating whether house prices will continue to rise, stagnate or crash. It's interesting but I thought it might be constructive to share ideas on how to make the situation work for us.

I thought it might be interesting to hear what everyone is doing to take advantage of the situation - whatever they believe that situation to be.

So, if you think house prices will rise what are you doing to make sure you benefit from that (if anything). If you think they'll fall what are you doing to benefit from that?

Or if you already have benefited from the crash and/or subsequent increase in prices then let us hear about it.

Or maybe you were around at the last crash - how well did you come out of it? Did you lose? gain? didn't make any difference to you?

I think my observational skills could be of help to you here

Bulls 'positioning' for the housing market:

Trousers down, on all fours, wearing size 15 blinkers .... Ready to be Rogered by high interest rates.

[Deleted User]

We were oblivious to the recession and house price crash. We'd hear people waffling on about it on the news but it didn't affect us or anyone we know. We had a nice house, mortgage paid off and no plans to move.

Then one day in late September '09 I stumbled across a house for sale. The most perfect house we've ever seen. We expected it to be worth 2 or 3 times as much as our house but it wasn't - it had been valued at the same price (£200k). We aranged to see it the next day and (provided it was as good as it seemed on paper) we agreed to offer £250k to secure it (it had only been on the market 2 days and we didn't want anyone else getting it). The house was in fact a million times better than it looked on paper so there and then we said to the owners - "We want it - how much do you want to secure it now?". £190k they said!!!!!! Two days later it was all done and dusted and 8 weeks later we'd moved in.

They think they've been very lucky to have got £190k and a quick and easy sale as they were well aware of the recession/crash and they lived in an area where places have always been hard to sell. We didn't tell them that had they asked for £250k they'd have got it!!!

We're over the moon to have got it for £190k. It's our 'forever home', but if it's valued at £200k when house prices have dropped significantly there's a lot of scope for it to increase in value when things recover. Add to that the fact that it's in a regeneration area where millions is being spent *despite* the recession and things start look very promising. But most importantly we've got a house that in our wildest dreams we didn't think we'd ever be able to afford.

Still got to sell the old house. That *should* be no problem as houses are selling well in our old area. It's expected that we'll get valuation price. Time will tell. If it gets 50% of valuation price we're still happy though. But obviously the more you get the better!!!!

Would we have got this house if it weren't for the recession/crash? I doubt it. I don't know that the sellers would have moved as they adored it too.

Mr_Matey

I could've bought in Aus prior to moving here, but didn't for a number of reasons, one of which being that I believed prices were too high. I still think they're too high in Aus based on salaries, rent etc.

What've I done about it? Continued to build up my savings, put my investment money elsewhere and took the opportunity to live abroad (though I probably would've done that anyway!). Interestingly, one very good investment would not have been possible had I bought a house - a good reminder of the opportunity cost of home ownership.

With the recent reduction in house prices / rents in my area, I negotiated down my rent.

So, still playing the waiting game, though I don't think I'll be buying anytime too soon as I don't plan on settling in an area or country yet. If prices in the UK or Aus dropped enough I might take the plunge though...

carolt

Deleted_User wrote: »

We were oblivious to the recession and house price crash. We'd hear people waffling on about it on the news but it didn't affect us or anyone we know. We had a nice house, mortgage paid off and no plans to move.

Then one day in late September '09 I stumbled across a house for sale. The most perfect house we've ever seen. We expected it to be worth 2 or 3 times as much as our house but it wasn't - it had been valued at the same price (£200k). We aranged to see it the next day and (provided it was as good as it seemed on paper) we agreed to offer £250k to secure it (it had only been on the market 2 days and we didn't want anyone else getting it). The house was in fact a million times better than it looked on paper so there and then we said to the owners - "We want it - how much do you want to secure it now?". £190k they said!!!!!! Two days later it was all done and dusted and 8 weeks later we'd moved in.

They think they've been very lucky to have got £190k and a quick and easy sale as they were well aware of the recession/crash and they lived in an area where places have always been hard to sell. We didn't tell them that had they asked for £250k they'd have got it!!!

We're over the moon to have got it for £190k. It's our 'forever home', but if it's valued at £200k when house prices have dropped significantly there's a lot of scope for it to increase in value when things recover. Add to that the fact that it's in a regeneration area where millions is being spent *despite* the recession and things start look very promising. But most importantly we've got a house that in our wildest dreams we didn't think we'd ever be able to afford.

Still got to sell the old house. That *should* be no problem as houses are selling well in our old area. It's expected that we'll get valuation price. Time will tell. If it gets 50% of valuation price we're still happy though. But obviously the more you get the better!!!!

Would we have got this house if it weren't for the recession/crash? I doubt it. I don't know that the sellers would have moved as they adored it too.

So basically you've positioned yourself to take advantage of the crash, and are now hoping prices will rise so you can be in the position to take advantage of that.

That would explain the tenor of a number of your recent posts.

Interesting.

[Deleted User]

Actually, no. As I said, we didn't position ourselves at all - I'd like to say that it was by design but we just got very, very lucky. We were so hopelessly unaware of the situation (no signs of recession where we live so we didn't pay much attention to it) that we could easily have ended up paying 60k more for the house - it's only because the sellers were frightened by house price crash stories that we didn't (something for sellers to bear in mind!!). We told them to name their price and we would have paid it.

Obviously if the crash had never occured I'd own property that was worth quite a bit more. Our old house isn't down much on 2007 prices but if prices had kept going up it would be worth a good bit more than it is. But it did happen and it might be the case that choosing to move at this time was a good decision from an investment point of view. But primarily our house is our home and we'd be prepared to lose tens of thousands off our investment to live in this particular house.

The good that came out of the resession for me was simply that this house is one in a million and I don't think the sellers would have moved had it not been for the recession (they moved near parents to reduce childcare costs). But I'd never welcome a recession and I'd rather not see someone forced out of their home in this way. On a positive note the sellers made a killing in HPI and we did pay much more than I think they expected to get. Which I'm glad about as they were nice people and we really love the house that they created.

I don't think our current situation has changed my views in any way. I could never feel pleased about resession or house price drops - even if it does benefit me in some ways.

The thing that's really nice is pretty much everyone on this thread seems to be happy with their lot!

davilown

Positioning in the market? Pay off the last of our debt in three weeks and then saving all the way. Probably take 18-24 months to get a sizeable deposit hopefully around 20%.

StevieJ

Deleted_User wrote: »

g to take advantage of the situation - whatever they believe that situation to be.

So, if you think house prices will rise what are you doing to make sure you benefit from that (if anything). If you think they'll fall what are you doing to benefit from that?

Live rent rent free until the HSF apocalypse
:eek:

bo_drinker

treliac wrote: »

It's all about at which point in the cycle you buy and sell.

A bit of planning and a bit of fate!

If the "right one" is out there. We moved in to temporary accom here, thought we would be here 6 to 8 weeks, that was 13 months ago. Biggest problem is the stocks are low very low If stocks were higher prices would be slightly lower imho, circumstance is the key to why prices haven't crashed