MSE News: House prices continue to rise, says Halifax

ruggedtoast

For goodness sake Brit. All I can see is that silly signature.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ruggedtoast wrote: »

For goodness sake Brit. All I can see is that silly signature.

You'd think he'd take the hint by now....

Pincher

Land banking is going to be punished in China by some kind of idle tax.

Hording valuable real estate can be damaging, e.g. shops on the high street going vacant because the landlord is holding out for higher rent.

So we don't fine developers for not building, but we do charge high rates so that keeping the land idle is expensive. The Battersea Power station was set up as an art gallery a few years back, full of alternative junk by idle hands, I assume to avoid some kind of penalty against disuse. The absurd thng was, people actually PAID to get in. I know I did.

brit1234

m0t wrote: »

why has supply suddenly fallen off a cliff edge?

The main reason is buy to let. After 2008 many people could sell at the value they wanted. Estate agents increasingly going out of business ever increasingly started to get their clients to rent out their properties rather than sell them. This gave the estate agents the revenue to survive but also reduced the pool of properties for sale. In addition landlords sell their properties far less often than residential sellers.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

From Reuters....

house prices are rising rapidly across Britain, mortgage lending has rebounded to its highest level since the Lehman crisis and homebuilders’ shares have almost doubled.

And all this is before the government incentives are expanded from newly-built houses to secondhand properties and remortgages in January 2014.

For the moment, house prices are being bid up by cash-rich buyers who are front-running the government subsidies, in the confident expectation that a full-scale property boom will begin in 2014.

It's being discussed here.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4691841