London's property boom over?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Getting annoyed with the opposition to your argument Hamish?

Bit too credible, so the insults start flying?

Nope. Just stating the obvious.

But as he's just demolished the bear case for SMI, housing benefit, QE and low base rates being the savior of the housing market by bringing Northern Ireland into the argument, I probably should cut him some slack.

shortchanged_2

I think the Brits are actually showing the stiff upper lip mentality when it comes to house prices. Firm resolve in the face of severe adversity.

I think now those lips are starting to quiver while the government tries to inject a dose of collagen. Mind you, some of the results of those trout pouts aint pretty.

SecondLegDownIsTheBigOne

shortchanged wrote: »

i think the brits are actually showing the stiff upper lip mentality when it comes to house prices. Firm resolve in the face of severe adversity.

I think now those lips are starting to quiver while the government tries to inject a dose of collagen. Mind you, some of the results of those trout pouts aint pretty.

:t


..........

the_flying_pig

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

...I've never denied that both credit fuelled speculation and a genuine supply/demand imbalance can cause prices to rise.

But once you remove the majority of credit, it's fairly obvious which was the case.

IN the case of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the USA it was a speculative bubble.

In the case of the mainland UK, it was a genuine supply/demand imbalance.

In fact if anything Northern Ireland strengthens my case so I'm surprised you'd bring it up. It has the same interest rate policy, the same banks, the same QE policy, the same social safety net and SMI, and the same major media channels as the rest of the UK.

Yet prices there are down nearly 50%.

Obviously if QE, low interest rates, housing benefits and SMI were all that is holding up the UK market, then they'd be working in Northern Ireland too.

The fact that they're not is just more evidence that the UK didn't, on the whole, have a speculative bubble and the bigger influence by far is a supply shortage.

...

Hold on.

You've started chucking in these horrible expressions like "credit fuelled speculation" and "genuine... demand", which are hopelessly difficult to define robustly. Let's steer clear of that kind of nonsense.

My post 52 was a much better and fairer attempt at comparing Ireland, NIreland, and the rest of the UK.

Basically it suggests [in line with basic commonsense] that the 'supply' side in terms of building/vacancies isn't very important. As such it clashes strongly with the central plank of what I'll loosely describe as your 'theory'.

If you were to say something to me like 'UK house prices didn't ever and will never fall as far as Irish ones because lending & hence prices didn't ever get quite so stupidly out of hand here' then I'd at least partly agree with you. It's where you start to push 'supply' side arguments that things start to go awry.

julieq

I honestly don't know why you bother Hamish. You're arguing with people who have consistently failed to get any prediction even directionally correct for a good 4 years or more, and they still believe they're right. They'll continue in the same direction endlessly, because there will always be some excuse for the apocalypse not quite arriving.

You'd have more chance of deprogramming a religious cult.

The idea that oversupply of housing is a lesser factor on prices than interest rate policy is clearly bananas. Anyway as the next leg down is definitely about to start (I'm reminded of that Rapture prophesy here), why not give them 6 months to enjoy that, or explain why it hasn't actually started yet.

shortchanged_2

julieq wrote: »

I honestly don't know why you bother Hamish. You're arguing with people who have consistently failed to get any prediction even directionally correct for a good 4 years or more, and they still believe they're right. They'll continue in the same direction endlessly, because there will always be some excuse for the apocalypse not quite arriving.

You'd have more chance of deprogramming a religious cult.

The idea that oversupply of housing is a lesser factor on prices than interest rate policy is clearly bananas. Anyway as the next leg down is definitely about to start (I'm reminded of that Rapture prophesy here), why not give them 6 months to enjoy that, or explain why it hasn't actually started yet.

And so enters the queen of spin.

Graham_Devon

shortchanged wrote: »

And so enters the queen of spin.

I love the fact that the person who has been saying house prices will rise for 4 years is actually correct in Julies head

SecondLegDownIsTheBigOne

Whenever Hamish is losing ...

julieq

Sorry Graham? You've been reading a different set of predictions than I have, because I've never seen Hamish say anything of the kind.

Do you care to go back and find me where he said that? Because what I've seen him give is conservative supply led predictions which within a small margin of error have been right on the money. Year in year out.

What is a bit depressing really is how wrong you can be consistently and still bounce back like a sarcastic piece of cork in a rising tide as if you were right all along. It's not me that's spinning anything, by and large my analysis has always been borne out by events. You're spinning a total failure to predict anything by you and your mates, and it's pretty pathetic.

the_flying_pig

The other instructive thing about these comparisons [sorry to bring it up for the squillionth time] is that the US's post 'crunch' GDP growth absolutely trounces ours 'despite' their vastly greater house price falls.

Which sits uncomfortably alongside H's great 'subsidise/bulldoze pwoperdee for growth' theory.