Nationwide Feb:+9.4% YoY

floridaman

Hamish - what is your advice to anyone renting? Prices can't go much higher can they?

AndyGuil

You will be waiting all your life if you expect prices to fall any significant amount. There is always volatility but the trend is upwards. The opportunity to fall came when the credit available to the market was reduced. Now it looks like it has just begun a new cycle upwards.

TickersPlaysPop

The government are morally bound to make inter generational mortgages and very long term mortgages illegal, this crazy free market capitalist housing market must be dampened and prevented from being a way of the banks easily making more and more money. Houses will then reach the point where they simply cannot go any higher.... People simply won't be able to afford it.... SIMPLES! Mortgages should have a max term, not as high as 50 years as seen in an earlier post. Then houses will increase in line with everything else in our lives?

Money is out there.... In the banks..... It might not be real money.... They borrow to lend to us.... And push the risk onto us.... But the financial money market .... It's hungry and desperately looking for growth.... If the government closes the door on further squeezing the housing market for more value increase and growth, that money will go somewhere else... Hopefully into less socially devisive areas, and into more productive things such as business growth.... I.e the thing we all know is needed to get our government out of the debt hole. Real growth to increase GDP.

Am I completely mad or ignorant to what is going on? Surely house builders would still be able to make money at the currently high house prices?

Let's take the complete freedom of the housing market from greedy banks, and limit their power to squeeze even more value out of it..... They are operating through landlords and private house buyers. We need to influence our government to stand up to the banks and do what is right.

No 110% mortgages
No to greater than 30yr mortgage terms
No to large multiples of earnings suggested max of X 2.5
Yes to sensible stamp duty increasing linearly with value, NOT segmented

Put these laws in place. Why has this not already been done? :-)

Generali

There aren't intergenerational mortgages in the UK and it would be an oxymoron anyway: mortgage means 'death pledge' which means that the debt dies with you.

92203

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I think that the point you're missing is that house prices are simply a matter of supply and demand.

Many of us observed the massive shortage of housing in the UK, predicted that would lead to profitable returns, and positioned ourselves accordingly.

And we've been right.

Prices in the UK remained high despite the worst global economic crisis in a century, and are now rising rapidly again despite heavily restricted mortgage lending far below historically normal levels, high unemployment, and low consumer confidence.

We absolutely need to see millions more houses being built in this country.

I don't agree with the NIMBY's at all.

But as long as we continue to build just a third of the houses we need, on top of an existing million house shortage, then prices must continue to rise so as to exclude sufficient people from the market and ration the limited stock of houses.

That's just how markets work....

I agree with everything you've written in this post Hamish, however what I was objecting to is TheQuant's stated desire that he would like to see measures put in place to drive prices higher, and for people to be forced to live in cramped conditions to support this situation.

I would like to see Nimbys become less influential, the planning system streamlined and liberalized, and ultimately sufficient houses and flats built to cater for demand. I also think that this country needs to lose it's phobia of high density accommodation. It is possible to build well designed blocks of flats which are safe, spacious and pleasant to live in.

CLAPTON

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

The government are morally bound to make inter generational mortgages and very long term mortgages illegal, this crazy free market capitalist housing market must be dampened and prevented from being a way of the banks easily making more and more money. Houses will then reach the point where they simply cannot go any higher.... People simply won't be able to afford it.... SIMPLES! Mortgages should have a max term, not as high as 50 years as seen in an earlier post. Then houses will increase in line with everything else in our lives?

Money is out there.... In the banks..... It might not be real money.... They borrow to lend to us.... And push the risk onto us.... But the financial money market .... It's hungry and desperately looking for growth.... If the government closes the door on further squeezing the housing market for more value increase and growth, that money will go somewhere else... Hopefully into less socially devisive areas, and into more productive things such as business growth.... I.e the thing we all know is needed to get our government out of the debt hole. Real growth to increase GDP.

Am I completely mad or ignorant to what is going on? Surely house builders would still be able to make money at the currently high house prices?

Let's take the complete freedom of the housing market from greedy banks, and limit their power to squeeze even more value out of it..... They are operating through landlords and private house buyers. We need to influence our government to stand up to the banks and do what is right.

No 110% mortgages
No to greater than 30yr mortgage terms
No to large multiples of earnings suggested max of X 2.5
Yes to sensible stamp duty increasing linearly with value, NOT segmented

Put these laws in place. Why has this not already been done? :-)

what percentage of mortgages are for more than 25 years?

it is very simple to observe that if house prices were unaffordable no-one would buy them : as people do buy them then they aren't unaffordable

yes you are igorant or mad

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

what percentage of mortgages are for more than 25 years?

it is very simple to observe that if house prices were unaffordable no-one would buy them : as people do buy them then they aren't unaffordable

yes you are igorant or mad

Are property prices affordable? Of course, to some, but in general?

If so, why do we need help to buy and all the other schemes put before it?

Surely if prices were affordable, you wouldn't need schemes enabling people (by various measures) to afford them?

ukcarper

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

The government are morally bound to make inter generational mortgages and very long term mortgages illegal, this crazy free market capitalist housing market must be dampened and prevented from being a way of the banks easily making more and more money. Houses will then reach the point where they simply cannot go any higher.... People simply won't be able to afford it.... SIMPLES! Mortgages should have a max term, not as high as 50 years as seen in an earlier post. Then houses will increase in line with everything else in our lives?

Money is out there.... In the banks..... It might not be real money.... They borrow to lend to us.... And push the risk onto us.... But the financial money market .... It's hungry and desperately looking for growth.... If the government closes the door on further squeezing the housing market for more value increase and growth, that money will go somewhere else... Hopefully into less socially devisive areas, and into more productive things such as business growth.... I.e the thing we all know is needed to get our government out of the debt hole. Real growth to increase GDP.

Am I completely mad or ignorant to what is going on? Surely house builders would still be able to make money at the currently high house prices?

Let's take the complete freedom of the housing market from greedy banks, and limit their power to squeeze even more value out of it..... They are operating through landlords and private house buyers. We need to influence our government to stand up to the banks and do what is right.

No 110% mortgages
No to greater than 30yr mortgage terms
No to large multiples of earnings suggested max of X 2.5
Yes to sensible stamp duty increasing linearly with value, NOT segmented

Put these laws in place. Why has this not already been done? :-)

Nothing new in long mortgage terms my first mortgage in the 70s was 35 year.

TickersPlaysPop

The problem is ..... the housing market IS NOT a simple case of supply and demand as some people have said on this thread.

It is the EXTRA dynamic of borrowing a significant sum of money to buy the house, either landlords or private purchase. If the borrowing is not legally restricted, the banks will keep altering the criteria for lending.... so the banks and law allow the housing market to keep increasing if world economic conditions are right for it to happen....

Increasing the term... So it becomes affordable
Increasing the amount they allow you to borrow... So it becomes affordable
Altering loan to value ratio.... So it become affordable

I'm using the word affordable here very loosely.... What I mean is that banks allow the value of the house to keep increasing ..... so the sum borrowed becomes larger and larger.

Somebody here mentioned Japan and the fact house loans ('mortgages') can be stretch across generations.... the UK must never allow this to happen.

TickersPlaysPop

Re: mortgage term of over 25% and how many people.....

I've just looked at lot of official house lending information available online FCA, BSA, Bank of England etc

I couldn't find statistics for the loan term.... I think we need to trend and track this parameter over time. If it becomes part of the routine figures reported regularly, there will be more motivation to control this aspect of the housing market.