MSE News: House prices up at fastest rate in three years

christopher1977

OffGridLiving wrote: »

Apologies if I gave the impression I thought you were making something up. I didn't.

My point, as I mentioned, was that it's difficult to know exactly how much someone in your position saved unless you had a (much negotiated) offer (grudgingly) accepted at £270k but the sale fell through for some reason and you ended up buying the house 2 years later for £200k.

Any other scenario is speculation, because until you went through the buying process with valuation, etc. you'd never really know whether the £270k represented fair market price at that point in time, or the owner was a chancer and put his sale up up massively.

What I'm getting at is that his house could have been worth £210k 2 years ago and he put it up for £270k to see if he could get any mugs interested. He obviously didn't get a sniff and so he's priced it realistically to sell. So instead of saving £70k - £8k (rent) you would have saved just £2k after waiting 2 years.

That's all just academic as you're looking to buy elsewhere anyway. One question though, are you not worried that house prices will crash once the 'props' of low interest rates have been taken away?

Hi mate - i totally agree with you we will never know what he might have accepted and so can never say for sure how much i saved (if any!).
In answer to your other question i am worried prices might crash if interest rates rise but i have been thinking this for a while now and the Govt. seem to want to do everything in their power to maintain the bubble. My cash has been invested for the last 2 years and made me about 12% but i am withdrawing that now as it was quite risky. So my choices are to buy a house now (with 50% deposit) and very manageable payments (2.69% fixed for 5 years) or leave it in an account gaining a pittance in interest.

OffGridLiving

christopher1977 wrote: »

Hi mate - i totally agree with you we will never know what he might have accepted and so can never say for sure how much i saved (if any!).
In answer to your other question i am worried prices might crash if interest rates rise but i have been thinking this for a while now and the Govt. seem to want to do everything in their power to maintain the bubble. My cash has been invested for the last 2 years and made me about 12% but i am withdrawing that now as it was quite risky. So my choices are to buy a house now (with 50% deposit) and very manageable payments (2.69% fixed for 5 years) or leave it in an account gaining a pittance in interest.

Sounds like you have thought everything through. Good luck with your purchase. One thing that will happen (I know from personal experience) is that as soon as you buy you'll forget about house prices and start looking at carpet and curtain prices.

christopher1977

OffGridLiving wrote: »

Sounds like you have thought everything through. Good luck with your purchase. One thing that will happen (I know from personal experience) is that as soon as you buy you'll forget about house prices and start looking at carpet and curtain prices.

just need to find the house now - narrowed it down to about 2 or 3 but i guess mrs christopher will ultimately decide:rotfl: