When interest rates to go back to normal many more distressed sellers?

Kohoutek

Bohdy wrote: »

So the same with comparing points of the dow to buy a house? You Cant buy a house with points of the DOW so why compare them right? Wrong, its a very good comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYJyVEUaC4

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

buglawton wrote: »

a moated castle in Germany.

buglawton wrote: »

a 23-room town house in a leafy square in a pleasant provincial Southern French town -

You don't have to go to Germany or France to find massive places in the middle of nowhere that are cheap.

You can do similar in Scotland or Wales.... A castle for the price of a decent detached in the home counties isn't hard to do within the UK.

Or indeed, you can buy a small flat in parts of the UK for £30K. Or a terraced house for £50K.

Of course, if you try to buy in Paris, much like London, you'll be shocked at the prices. You can easily pay 300K for a small one bed flat in a fair to middle area of Paris.

buglawton wrote: »

I'm not going to get dragged down the silver alley... long term house prices in Germany have tracked salaries with the odd 'hot spot' exception like in Munich or Frankfurt. Anyone who bought decades ago in Germany, hoping to 'make a killing' would be disappointed.

Germany is at a completely different place in the housing cycle because of reunification and population changes. You can't compare the two.

FTBFun

For the love of......how many alternate logins do you need?

chucky

FTBFun wrote: »

For the love of......how many alternate logins do you need?

and you thought [STRIKE]shortchanged[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]dervrprof[/STRIKE] debtistheft were trying hard...

buglawton

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

You don't have to go to Germany or France to find massive places in the middle of nowhere that are cheap.

You can do similar in Scotland or Wales.... A castle for the price of a decent detached in the home counties isn't hard to do within the UK.

Or indeed, you can buy a small flat in parts of the UK for £30K. Or a terraced house for £50K.

Of course, if you try to buy in Paris, much like London, you'll be shocked at the prices. You can easily pay 300K for a small one bed flat in a fair to middle area of Paris.




Germany is at a completely different place in the housing cycle because of reunification and population changes. You can't compare the two.

I should add that both examples I mentioned are in attractive tourist areas. The castle example was a perhaps a bit colourful - we all know they need loads of renovation. More practically, a large detached house in a leafy suburb of a popular city in Germany, with excellent infrastructure, schools and public transport on the doorstep, can cost half the equivalent in the UK. And the rooms + windows would never be so tiny as anything (outside the super-luxury league) built in the UK since the 70s.

The reason that European prime land is not so out-land-ishly priced is that so many folks in mainland EU are content & happy living their lives in medium-rise developments. These are built to a vastly higher standard then most non-luxury flats in the UK, so are tolerable. This takes the pressure off land prices for those who really do want a proper house, as does the general lack of property speculation in mainland Europe.

buglawton

To afford to be that crowded (double our population) we'd have to be as productive and yet as frugal and sensible as the average Japanese person.
Ain't gonna happen!

There's a lovely little interactive graphing tool where you can choose your criteria - e.g. Prices against Incomes, or Prices against Rents, or just plain Prices, then choose a selection of countries and get nice time-line graphs of the trend:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/03/global_house_prices

What surprises me is how expensive France looks... maybe it's the cities that cause this, I know Paris is murderous.
Meanwhile Germany looks like an absolute bargain. Retire in Germany, anyone?

chucknorris

debtistheft wrote: »

I'm referring to the idiot home owners who withdraw equity from their homes in order to pay for a celebrity-style lifestyle that they can't afford. Virtually all home owners have dont this yet they are all reluctant to admit it. They will be in debt until theit dying day. Idiots.

I do not know anyone who has done this (all my friends, family and most of my work colleagues are homeowners). To state that 'virtually all home owners have done this' is a ridiculous generalisation.

tartanterra

chucknorris wrote: »

I do not know anyone who has done this (all my friends, family and most of my work colleagues are homeowners). To state that 'virtually all home owners have done this' is a ridiculous generalisation.

Ditto.
Just more unsubstantiated nonsense from debtissockpuppet.
I only know one person who has done this, but I know a lot of people who are mortgage free.

If this really is the case debtissockpuppet, and virtually all homeowners are in debt, then please feel free to post a link to the data.

DervProf

chucky wrote: »

and you thought [STRIKE]shortchanged[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]dervrprof[/STRIKE] debtistheft were trying hard...

:rotfl:

Try harder yourself, Sherlock.

Poshbird

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

You don't have to go to Germany or France to find massive places in the middle of nowhere that are cheap.

You can do similar in Scotland or Wales.... A castle for the price of a decent detached in the home counties isn't hard to do within the UK.

Or indeed, you can buy a small flat in parts of the UK for £30K. Or a terraced house for £50K.

Of course, if you try to buy in Paris, much like London, you'll be shocked at the prices. You can easily pay 300K for a small one bed flat in a fair to middle area of Paris.




Germany is at a completely different place in the housing cycle because of reunification and population changes. You can't compare the two.

So the property bulls are admitting that parts of the UK are crashing, but the average is not?

Its the average house price that is what`s important to understand what is happening to the housing market.