So who's planning to buy a place in 2011?

FTBFun

I have a feeling a certain poster with a Union flag as an avatar has bought actually.

System

Cleaver wrote: »

Is your current place too small or are you having more kids? Or do you just like to upsize your house every now and again?

- Not really, it's pretty roomy for the 2 of us and 2 cats.
- Some time in the next couple of years, basically we want a bigger place before having kids, with a nice garden.
- This is my first place, I don't think I'd upsize for the sake of it, actually, maybe I would, dunno.

Heyman_2

FTBFun wrote: »

I have a feeling a certain poster with a Union flag as an avatar has bought actually.

I think he'd bought and sold many times long before he started posting on here as a 'FTB'.

Pete111

abaxas wrote: »

Not sure I could find a 70% reductions. But 50% is easy in terms of marketed price.

Especially in awful areas of the NE.

If this were true in any remotely decent area in London/The south people would be piling in with cash buys - me included.

Not going to happen (but if it does....then I'm there!)

kabayiri

You don't need house prices to fall across the board.

You just need to find a distressed seller with a house you are interested in.

Procrastinator333

By the end of the year / early 2012 we will be at the magic 20-25% mark. It will be decision time at that point.

EDIT : That is 20-25% deposit, not expecting falls of 20-25% by then....

Graham_Devon

Pete111 wrote: »

If this were true in any remotely decent area in London/The south people would be piling in with cash buys - me included.

Not going to happen (but if it does....then I'm there!)

Would you though?

Would you really pile in to buying an asset which is basically falling in price JUST because it's hit a magical 40 50 or 60% mark?

On that theory, you'd be rushing in to buy HMV shares today. Forget what's made them fall (same with housing), just pile in and buy them. Or rushing in to buy BP shares when the well was still spewing oil out and the share price was still falling off a cliff.

I just don't think people would be rushing in to buy.....they'd be far to wary after such falls.

DervProf

No need, thankfully.

I've got one, and I only need one. Or do I ? Pension isn't doing quite as well as I thought. Savings aren't really earning anything. Maybe I should buy at least one more. It's the right thing to do, isn't it ?

LydiaJ

Cleaver wrote: »

What boat? It's the analogy of a boat leaving and lots of people missing it, with no further chance of a boat for them which I find so silly.

There were houses around last year, there are housing around this year and they'll be houses around next year. And likely to be houses around for years and years to come. No one 'misses a boat' by not buying now, as they can just buy in the future.

Well, I agree I don't think there are going to be many people missing housing boats this year, but I do think the analogy has something to it when applied to the last twenty years.

In the early to mid 90s I was in a peer group of young married graduate couples. Almost all our friends bought at that time. We didn't, because late-nearly-ex was doing low paid part-voluntary work, and then because I was supporting him through getting another degree, and also because we both knew he was going into a career where housing would be provided with the job.

We thought we'd buy a place eventually - a holiday property or BTL or something - so that when we retired and weren't provided with tied housing, we'd have something to sell to fund a house to retire into. But it all seemed not at all urgent. Once he started earning full time, we had two kids and I gave up work to stay at home with them.

A few years later, he got sacked, and then a little after that he left me. I looked at the size of my deposit, and realised that while it would have covered the whole purchase price of a 3 bed semi in 1993-5 when our friends were buying, it wouldn't achieve much in 2007. Working part time with two kids, I couldn't earn enough to get a mortgage on anything big enough to house the three of us in the town where my jobs are. But if late-nearly-ex and I had bought in the early 90s and upsized a bit since, then the equity we'd have built up could have been split to enable each of us to find somewhere - not a palatial somewhere, but a reasonable somewhere.

Why, I asked myself, had I been so completely oblivous of HPI and its implications in the 90s and especially the early 00s? I felt there had been a chance years ago and we missed it, and it was very frustrating.

OK, so now I am buying. I missed the normal kind of boat, but an extremely high powered hovercraft came along unexpectedly in the shape of late-nearly-ex's life insurance, and suddenly enabled me to catch up with my friends. But that doesn't happen to most people.

SingleSue

Not me....but then I am not planning it for 2012,2013 or any other year either!